post by Stephanie Nelson
Whether an individual or a business, managing your social profiles is one of the most important things you can do. Here’s why:
- It has been reported that 34% of hiring managers do an online search for job candidates. This makes managing your social profiles – like Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, LinkedIn, etc. – important for individuals. Because finding nothing at all about a candidate can potentially be more damaging than finding something bad.
- For businesses, it’s even more crucial in that 75-88% of all clicks come from the organic section of the search results. The more real estate you occupy there, by having not only your website but also your profiles show in the results, you’re going to look more credible AND you’re going to push your competitors’ listings lower. That makes it more likely that you will get that searcher’s click, which gives you more potential to convert him or her into a customer.
- Furthermore, for individuals and businesses, when you’re the one managing the profiles, you’re in control of the message. Would you let a competitor place an ad for you in the newspaper? Would you let a rival job candidate build your resume? Of course not! Letting others take control of your online message, whether it’s Google or Superpages build your company a page built from other items found online or it’s not staying on top of what your frenemies post about you on Facebook (which is indexed by the search engines), it’s effectively the same as letting them run that ad or build your resume. And it’s not helping you at all.
So you tell us… how are you managing your social profiles?
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