Sometimes one of the best parts of being active on social media is creating your online profile. You get to choose a great photo, come up with a catchy username and write an interesting bio about yourself. But, as a professional looking to engage with clients, there are a few things you should consider.

In a recent blog, we discussed the importance of using multiple social media outlets to market to your audience. In order to do that effectively, you need to keep your profile consistent and recognizable. Keep the same username, profile photo and bio for each platform. That way, clients will recognize you and be more likely to follow.

Username: Try to keep your username simple. It will be hard for clients to find you if they are searching for John Doe, but your username is ILovePizza72. It’s best to stick to basics and have your username be your first and last name. This includes refraining from using your middle name. It’s a popular trend to use your first and middle name for your profile, but your clients don’t know your middle name – they know your first and last. You can even go as far as adding a career designation to your profile. For example, instead of just @JohnDoe, you could make it @JohnDoe_REALTOR® or @JDoe_Homesale. Clients won’t want to spend a lot of time searching for you so the simpler you can make it for them to find you the better.

Photo: As a professional looking to engage with clients, the best photo you could use is an up-to-date photo of just you. It could be a professionally taken photo, a selfie or one that someone else took of you. As long as it is recent and clearly you, it doesn’t matter who took it. If you really want your profile photo to be you and your spouse or you and your kids, that’s fine. The bottom line is that you should be in the photo and clearly visible. You want to make sure that your clients can tell it’s your profile at a glance.

Bio: Online profile bios can be as short or as long as the character limit allows. The two most important things you should include in your bio is your occupation and your area of service. For example, the bio for John Doe could be something like this:

REALTOR® – Hanover, PA – Pizza Lover – Dad – Go EAGLES!

Final Tips: Make sure whenever you update one profile, you update them all. Another thing you can consider if you want more freedom to personalize your online profile, is to set up two different accounts; one personal and one professional. You can make your personal one any username, photo and bio you want while still keeping the professional one to interact with clients. The choice is yours!