Cleaning up your online profiles

Now that you have a new headshot, it’s time to update all your online profiles. Of course, there are the places you’re at every day like Twitter and Facebook, but where else are you?

One way to find out is to Google yourself. Try searching on – YOUR NAME profile, “YOUR NAME” profile, and “YOUR NAME profile.” Do the same thing at Bing.com and Yahoo.com, too. Then start clicking away and updating your profile.

Warning: if a site you don’t recognize comes up in a search make sure you have good virus protection software installed on your computer before clicking on it. Or just leave it alone.

(I clicked on one of those phishing links just to check it out. Virus protection shields immediately went up and put whatever it was trying to download into quarantine. I ran my virus protection software again, and the next time I started the computer, Windows cleaned up some corrupted files on my drive. Scary!)

Creating a perfect social networking profile

Besides your picture, what else should you have in your profile? Depending on what the site lets you do, here are some basics:

• Your name or how you want people to know you. If you’re professionally blogging, writing or consulting, you should use your full name. (On Facebook you may want to include your maiden name, so your high school friends can find you. If you’re blogging anonymously, call yourself by your blog name or a shorten version of it. For example, if your blog is Weight Loss Yoga Mom, maybe you want to use “WLYogaMom” or “YogaMom” instead.
• Location. We’re all concerned about privacy, so instead of putting your town, you may want to use the nearest big city or your general region. That’s why I often use Rocky Mountain High, Colorado instead of my town’s name.
• Contact information. Again, consider privacy and spammers. Many social networking sites let you keep your email hidden. If people want to get hold of you, they can direct message you on the site.
• Your blogs, Twitter and Facebook pages. List all the places you are at online. Some sites will pass “Google juice” via links to your blog. How can you tell? Use a program like Quirk Search Status, a Firefox extension that highlights the No Follow links on a website. Ning sites don’t pass on Google juice, but BlogHer.com does.

Some sites let you add extras like:

• Your RSS feed. Ning profiles let you do this as do some other social networking sites. Why not share your content with your online friends?
• Your Facebook badges. If there is a place to add text in your profile (Ning sites have this function) put in the text for your Facebook badges – either for your personal profile and/or your fan page.
• Pictures. You may want to add a badge for your blog or some personal photographs.
• Updates. If you can, link the site’s update line to Twitter or Facebook. That way you can update several places at once.
• Colors and design elements. Many social networking sites let you change colors and add background images. Why not your profile page look like your blog? I’ve done this in YouTube, Ning sites and CafeMom.

Other things to keep in mind:

• Who is your audience? If it’s a friend to friend site like Mom Central’s Spark community, keep it casual. Share pictures of your family, your craft projects and your recipes. If it’s a business site like LinkedIn, you should keep it more professional.
• Consistency. Try to have the same information on all your networking sites and use the same name – either your full name or a profile name like “YogaMom.”
• Does it serve you? If you’re inactive on a social networking site – and the site doesn’t pass on any Google juice - contact the site owner to remove your profile.

What social networks should mom bloggers use?

• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Mom Central’s Spark community – make sure to join the Moms Who Blog group
• Mom Bloggers Club
• BlogHer
• YouTube
• Flickr

What other social networking sites do you use to promote yourself and your blog? Comment below.

Comments

[Jennifer @ Simple Scrapper]

I disagree with the recommendation to link up all your profiles so you can only post once. This adds to the digital clutter. It can also be very annoying since most people using Twitter with a much higher frequency than other social networks.

[Anne-Marie]

Jennifer, I understand what you're saying about noise. But linking all your social sites together to update from one - and it goes out to the others - is very convenient and timesaving. (You can also use Ping.fm to do this for you.)

The nice thing about a Ning site, is that you have the option of opting out when you update. Many other sites let you do that too, for example FourSquare. So you can decide whether to leave your update on one site without having the message go to the rest.