The Most Important Part of Your Social Network is Your Social Identity; Do You Have One?

When it comes to social networking, one of the best ways to promote your brand — your company brand or your personal brand — is to customize any of your social network pages that allow it and by keeping the themes consistent. I like to refer to this as your “social identity”. Whether someone is looking at your website, reading your blog, checking out your Twitter or Facebook page, viewing your YouTube videos, or gasp, looking at your MySpace page, they should instantly know it’s you.

Here are some suggestions:

1. Put your logo and/or photo on everything. If you’re a company that’s just common sense, unless you don’t have a logo, in which case I have to ask, why not? If you’re branding yourself — perhaps you’re a motivational speaker or social media guru — slap your photo everywhere. That way when people see you at conventions, tweetups, etc., you’re immediately recognizable.

2. If you don’t already have a corporate color, pick one and stick with it. Corporate colors are an important part of your identity package and should be used in a consistent way across all of your social networks as well as your websites, business cards, etc.

3. If your social networking sites allow you to customize the page, do it. If they allow custom backgrounds, add one. Even if someone only sees your Twitter or Facebook page once, a custom background gives you a chance to make a good first impression and tell them more than what will fit in the short bio space they give you. If you have a YouTube channel and make your own videos, the background that shows on the sides gives you a perfect spot to promote something and every time someone visits your channel, they’ll see it.

Social media has provided us with an amazing way to market ourselves and interact with our clients/customers and if you don’t consider your “social identity” as you grow your social network, you’re leaving a lot of food on the table.

This Thanksgiving take a minute to look at the table when the feast is ready. What do you see? Lots of different kinds of foods but with one common thread. They’re all traditionally related. The turkey, the stuffing, the cranberry sauce, the mashed potatoes, and the pumpkin pie all taste completely different, but they all go together in a wonderful way.

Related posts:

1. Real-time Social Media Counter
2. Twitter Image is Now Social Identities
3. Elf Yourself is Back; Now with Social Networking Functionality