Maintaining consistency within your blog is one of the best ways to gain loyal followers and establish a visual identity for readers to remember you by. Post graphic templates, writing style, and a solid brand are the main ways to create that identity on your blog, but what about your other outlets? Keeping your online presence consistent will really solidify your audience’s perception of you, which is all they have considering they probably haven’t met you in person! While your blog is where you show off your talents and give your readers wonderful content, social media is where they get to know you on a more personal level, and that’s where your next focus should be when establishing your online presence.
There are several actions you can take to start streamlining your social media profiles. I’ll be going through some main steps, and beyond that, it’s your job to keep it up!
Make all of your profile images the same
You know that gorgeous image you have at the top of your sidebar? Upload that photo as your profile picture on all of your social media profiles. Your audience will start connecting that photo with your blog and overall presence, which is just the start of this process! Most social media platforms use a square profile picture, so having a high quality square image in your files will make things super simple.
Create a consistent cover photo
Most social media pages have a space for a cover photo, and using the same photo across them is just as important as using the same profile picture. Unfortunately, each platform has a different size, so you’ll have to do a bit of editing here. I’d suggest designing the biggest one first, and then cropping from there! Here are the sizes for the most used social media platforms:
Facebook: 851 x 315 px
Twitter: 1500 x 500 px
Google Plus: 1088 x 608 px
Use your own voice
By now you’ve probably developed a consistent writing style within your blog, so this part should be easy. When posting on social media, try to use that same voice, because your audience will recognize it! For example, I’m a fairly sarcastic person, and I try to be as relatable as I can in my posts. I maintain that style on social media by posting sarcastic tweets and random thoughts throughout my day, which my followers seem to connect well with!
Create a short bio to use across the board
A lot of bloggers have a short snippet about themselves on their blog, and it’s the perfect bio to use on social media. Using the same bio on every platform establishes who you are, and how you want your audience to see you, so choose your words wisely and try to get as much information as you can into just a sentence or two. Character limits are the barrier here, so if you have to change things up in order to meet that requirement, take out any fluff words and narrow down what your audience really needs to know about you.
One last tip: Try to avoid posting the same thing to each profile (I know, that sounds like the opposite of consistency!). A lot of your followers probably follow you on multiple platforms, so it can seem spammy when your word for word exact post shows up on several of them. Instead, try changing up the wording to suit the platform you’re using, and scatter the posts throughout the day to catch readers who may not have been online earlier!
How do you use social media to establish your online presence? Have you discovered any tricks to retaining followers on those profiles? I’d love to know!