Caveat: I’m guilty of this myself!

You likely have an “About Me” or “About Our Company” or “About Us” page on your website. And you certainly have a thumbnail image that you use for your social media profiles (if you’re not using a logo or brand). Occasionally you might be asked to be interviewed on a blog, or an article may be written referencing you. In each of these circumstances, you may want a photo of yourself displayed. In a physically disconnected world, where many of your networks and connections are made online, it’s more important than ever for people to sense your authenticity and your personality.

And you don’t want a terribly lit & untouched-up photo of yourself taken at a friend’s wedding, or a snapshot of your vacation to Costa Rica to be the way you represent yourself to the world via your business. I once had a client who wanted to use a photo of himself at an event where he was clearly snozzled – yikes!

If it’s your personal Facebook profile and you regularly update it to show something recent & cute, that’s one thing, if it’s a headshot of you on the website of your business, that’s another thing entirely. This isn’t to say it needs to be stuffy, or nostalgic for Sears photo shoots circa 1981… you want it to reference your personality and that of your business. Read on to learn more about how to make headshots work for you, and see some great examples…

Recently I wrote about creating custom Twitter backgrounds to extend your brand, but what about Facebook?

In the magical triad of social media marketing (your blog, Twitter and Facebook profiles), you want to make sure your brand appears in each place – not just in your tone and message, but also in the way it looks. With so much competition for people’s attention, brand synchronicity certainly helps you stick in people’s minds.

You can customize your Facebook page to include any number of tabs, with whatever content you like, but when you stick to one or two beyond the standard “Wall” and “Info” tabs – you’re keeping your message clear and concise. Click to check out some best practices for creating custom Facebook pages…

You’ve probably seen Twitter profiles from users who have a custom Twitter background. A custom Twitter background is a background image that has some information about them, maybe a photo, information about their website, etc…

Realizing that their brand can be extended not only through the content they author, but also through the way their profile looks on services like Twitter, they had custom background images created:

• http://twitter.com/SPOONFoundation
• http://twitter.com/taxresolution
• http://twitter.com/sweetbeemagic
• http://twitter.com/cooltweets
• http://twitter.com/ijustine

This is a relatively small investment for brand synergy, and helps people already familiar with your brand know they’ve found the right person on Twitter to follow. Remember that people aren’t usually reading your Twitter feed on your Profile page, they’re reading it on their Twitter Home page, or another Twitter application (like Tweetie). So, we’re really just talking about first impressions – like when someone clicks through a reference to you in another tweet, or clicks through to your Twitter profile page from a website – people will make the decision about whether to follow your feed very quickly. Their decisions will be based on whether the content looks interesting/valuable – don’t forget that part of that perception is based on the way your profile looks!

Read on to learn more about some best practices…

We all know how it’s important to make meaningful connections with your clients and/or customers. One of the ways you can do this is by sharing with them not only through Twitter and Facebook, but also through YouTube and Flickr. Your brand is an extension of your personality, so use the great tools out there that help you bring it to life!

Putting a face and a voice to a name brings an instant connection that may not have been there previously. It also gives you the chance to share goings-on in a way that enhances your customer’s experience…

For example, if you’re opening a restaurant, add photos and videos of the process of creating the venue to your blog posts – or even create just a photo-blog as a way to start building publicity. People are often invested in and excited about what you’re doing well before they set foot in the door. Or, if you’re building a small business around dog training, offer up some free video tidbits of you and your pup in action. Be creative! If you’re reluctant to be the star of the show, collaborate with someone else – or keep yourself behind the camera. There’s no right or wrong way to go about it.

Bringing your business to life like this can make it, and you, much more approachable & lowers the bar for initial customer contact. It also allows you to spread awareness to audiences who might not otherwise have discovered your offering. With user bases in the millions, using targeted tags and linking back to your website on YouTube & Flickr is fantastic way to bring a new audience to your offering.

This week in the Client Spotlight is Ann Levine, Esq., Law School Admissions Consulting Expert and author of The Law School Admission Game: Play Like an Expert. Ann is the former director of admissions for two ABA law schools, and more than 100,000 law school applicants have relied upon her Law School Expert blog to guide them through the application process.

What do you wish you’d known about creating an online presence before you started?

I wish I’d understood the importance of branding. I started in 2004 with a free template website that looked TERRIBLE. I spent a lot of time teaching myself everything and thought that because I had a lot of credible information on my site that the site itself should appear credible. A year later I upgraded to a basic web design and paid about $700 for it – which felt like a lot at the time. It looked better, but was really still a template. It did the trick but didn’t brand me because it was fairly generic. Only when I (literally) sat down with someone who understood my brand and what my online presence needed to project did I feel like I was projecting credibility and deserving of charging higher prices to my clients as a result.

What’s the most important thing you learned about online marketing along the way?

To employ experts. People hire me to have an expert at their side through the law school application process, and I hire others because I don’t have time to become an expert on web marketing, SEO, PPC, etc. So, I hired people to help me who already know this stuff better than I ever could learning it on my own. It’s not as expensive as you might imagine, but it only works if you work with people who “get” what you’re all about. I flailed using big companies that I found online and only thrived once I found that one person who understood what I meant in a sentence long email or 2 second phone call and didn’t need me to coach her to get what I wanted.

What’s the best advice you have for someone just getting started now?

Use a blog to provide quality information and form relationships with others in your field and related fields. If you are good with people, Twitter and Facebook. Network constantly, and help others in their quests because good acts come back around.

I’m sure you’ve seen all those people on Twitter who tweet their blog posts, and you’ve probably also seen blogs where they either link to their Twitter account, or show their tweets right there on the page.  How do they do it? How *do* you connect your blog and Twitter?

» Read on to discover how to automatically add your blog posts to Twitter…

It’s a tough lesson learned for many authors that if you write it, they won’t necessarily come..  so here are some great ways to kick start your online self promotion, and get involved with a community of like-minded individuals at the same time:

1. Shelfari.  This site (owned by Amazon) allows you to connect with other authors and readers over what each of you is reading.  By creating a virtual bookshelf online, participants can easily see what you’re reading and they make it easy to start up a discussion.
2. GoodReads.  “Imagine it as a large library that you can wander through and see everyone’s bookshelves, their reviews, and their ratings. You can also post your own reviews and catalog what you have read, are currently reading, and plan to read in the future. Don’t stop there – join a discussion group, start a book club, contact an author, and even post your own writing.”
3. LibraryThing.  “LibraryThing helps you create a library-quality catalog of your books. You can do all of them or just what you’re reading now.  And because everyone catalogs online, they also catalog together.  LibraryThing connects people based on the books they share.”
4. AuthorsDen.com.  “The largest most vibrant free online literary community of authors and readers!  Visited by 1,400,000+ readers/mo.”
5. Nothing Binding.  “The Leading Global Social Networking Site for writers, authors, readers and book buyers, Nothing Binding unites these groups everywhere around the world. When you join, You can promote your books; connect with fellow writers and authors, hungry readers and book buyers; and discover great new writing.”
6. FiledBy.  “Any author with a book published in the U.S. or Canada can join for free, manage and enhance their pages, promote their books, check for accuracy, provide corrections and much more.”
7. Readers Place & Authors Place.  Created by Random House as an online book club community and place to find out more about authors and their books.
8. Red Room.  “For years, writers have joined the Red Room Writers Society to get their writing done in a supportive environment. Most people don’t need more instruction; they need to write. The Red Room Writers Society is the only writers society or school focused on writing rather than focused on reading and talking.”

Each of these sites has a slightly different angle on a similar model, so create a profile wherever you can and try them out!  See which one you like the best and get out there and participate!

I noticed recently that many of my clients had a hard time wrapping their brains around the idea of social media services and how they could leverage them for their benefit.  So, to help them (and myself by not having to create redundant content) I wrote this document, Leveraging Online Social Media for Marketing Purposes.

There are lots of boutique options that I didn’t cover, but perhaps will in future posts!

In the course of creating the document, I did a quick search for other similar resources, and other than the ever-wonderful Wikipedia, I didn’t find much easily digestible information that wasn’t associated with someone trying to sell a seminar, a book, or their services.  Many times, this meant they either explained what something meant, but not how to use it successfully, or, they explained how to use something, but not what it meant.  I felt the interwebs needed a resource that tried to do both.

Feedback is encouraged – feel free to leave comments.