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Spreading the word about your website through social media such as Facebook and Twitter is one of the most important steps on the journey to becoming a highly successful blogger.  Yet using social media is about much more than just promoting your web pages and latest posts.  If you can actually get people to read your social media profile pages, this gives you a direct sales pitch guaranteed to capture the attention of your potential customers and readers and encourage them to visit your website.

Don’t forget there are now more than 400 million users on Facebook according to the social media giant, which is almost 100 million more people than the population of the USA.  If just a small proportion of these people see your social media profile page, you’ll have a good chance of creating a loyal readership that’ll join your network of fans, and hopefully invite all their friends along with them.  So that’s why we’ve put together 7 secrets to promoting your social media profile pages, so that you can create a website that people are really talking about. 

1.  Create Winning Facebook, Twitter and other Social Network Profile Pages: 

Before you even begin to promote your profile page, you must first create a winning and compelling profile for you or your company.  Here are a few basic tips:

• Website address:  always include your website address, using the full domain name, so that people can easily click to your site.
• Upload a photo or image:  make your profile as visual as possible to create an identification with your brand.  Also use keywords when you name a photo to increase search engine optimization. 
• Add video:  you can upload YouTube video to most social media profile pages, giving people a real insight into who you are and what your company does.
• Add your Blog RSS to your profile page
• Write a killer company overview:  outlining who you are, what you offer and why your potential customers need you.
• Include contact information:  make sure your potential customers can contact you directly. 

2.  Use the Social Media Page Plug In

This unique WordPress plug in allows you to create a website that displays your favorite social media profiles on any page or post.  It supports over 140 different social media networks, so you’re bound to find your favorites.  All it does is place a simple line of code, which then links to all of your chosen profiles.  You can also add a widget to your sidebar, which lists all your social media profiles.  

An alternative plug in is Social Profilr, which only supports 14 social media networks.  However, you have more options of how to display your social media icons, allowing you to create a website over which you have greater control.  The profiles are displayed on the sidebar, in a horizontal or vertical configuration, or as a drop down menu.  

Both of these plug ins are free to download from our resources page. 

3.  Use Facebook Apps to Promote Your Profile:

Facebook now make it really easy for you to promote your profile pages, with hundreds of apps available to download.  Some of our favorites are the My BusinessBlinkWeb app, which creates a widget that others can place on their profile with a link to your business page.  This is an easy and free way to advertise using your network of friends. 

You could also use the MyLinkedInProfile app, which links your Facebook and Linkedin Profiles, helping to draw in more visitors to your profile pages.  Finally there’s the GL Print Business Card, which allows you to design a virtual business card for your profile page, that’s easy to distribute around your clients, customers and friends.  All of these apps are available from the Facebook apps directory.

4.   Regularly submit your social media profiles to search engines

The rules of search engine optimization have changed recently and search engines are now crawling social media profiles and networks to rank in results pages.  So when you create a website it’s not just optimization of your own pages you need to consider.  You also need to ensure your social media profile pages are submitted for search engine ranking.  One of the simplest ways of doing this is to go direct to Google and submit the URL on their submission page. 

5.  Tweetmeme Button:

Another really useful plug in that’s available to download for free from our resources page.  It has a dual function, allowing you to promote your Twitter profile, your posts and Tweets all at the same time.  It’s used by some of the biggest websites in the world, including Time Magazine, Wired and CNET, and is one of the most popular re-tweeting plug ins. 

You can change the settings of this plug in to list your Twitter username before each Tweet, which ensures that people can view your Twitter ID and link directly to your profile page and find out more about you.  You can also display this button in RSS feeds and it allows your posts and pages to easily be re-tweeted, for extra social media publicity. 

6.  Add Links to Your Profiles in All Correspondence

Whenever you write to your clients, customers, friends and family, place links to your social media profiles at the end of each correspondence, including letters and emails, as well as any advertising material or business cards.  This ensures that people can look you up on their favorite social media platforms and join your network of friends.  

7.  Give a thank you to regular commentators:

Finally if someone is regularly commenting on your blog they’re doing a huge favor for your site in terms of reader engagement and development of a community.  One thing you can do is to thank your regular commentators by allowing them to display their social media profile pages on your site. 

There are a number of plug ins to help you do this, but the Social Profiles plug in is particularly useful because commenters have to register and subscribe to your blog in order to display their profiles.  After doing this they can then enter their usernames for up to 10 social media platforms, placing links to their profiles every time they comment on your blog.  You can also decide which social media platforms are enabled.

If you would like more information on using social media to promote your blog, this article has 5 social media strategies to boost search engine rankings.