Your business is on every social media platform known to man! Congrats! Now, what? Before you come up with totally awesome creative content, before you invite everyone under the sun to like your page, even before you start begging for phone calls and website clicks, you need one major thing – a profile picture.
Just as Megan explained in her blog about profile photos on LinkedIn, businesses must have professional profile photos on social media to establish legitimacy. However, there are some rules when it comes to a business’s profile image that differ greatly from your personal one.
- Use an image that will brand you. Yes, that photo of your child’s fifth birthday party is adorable, but unless your child is the face of your company, it really doesn’t belong on your business’s page, let alone as your profile picture. Your picture needs to be something recognizable and iconic for you. Does your business have a logo? Make sure people know and keep it in mind by making it the image that pops up on all of your posts and interactions. Are you the face of your company (such as a lawyer or a photographer)? Then take advantage of it with professional headshots that show you off! Constantly changing your image to things that are not associated with your business will cause people to not associate your posts with you. They won’t recognize your business right away because the photos have nothing to do with the business. Most people on Facebook are scrolling down their feeds and do not bother to read who posted something, just what they posted. However, our brains can recognize a photo in a matter of milliseconds. Even glancing at your profile photo after seeing a post can make a world of difference.
- Use that image on EVERYTHING. If it is your profile image on Facebook, use it on Twitter, Blogger, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google+, and so on. By doing this, you’re branding yourself across platforms. If someone is your fan on Twitter and sees the same image pop up on Facebook, they are more likely to follow you there as well. If your social media follower is looking for your product or service on Google and your image pops up, they are probably going to click on it because they recognize it. Make sure your brand is consistent so that you do not confuse and potentially lose customers!
- Keep it simple. Each social media site resizes and repurposes your photo like nothing else. Even going from one major site to the next, the size of your profile photo is drastically different. When the photo is at its largest and you can see your logo, that’s great! But how will it look when it shrinks? The full size of a Facebook profile photo is 180px x 180px. If you shrink the photo down to the comment size of 43 x 43, will your logo be recognizable? Could you pick it out of a hoard of other comments? For example:
Dynamic Restoration Solutions: 
Is it time for a second look at your profile image? If you are questioning if your image is right for your business, call Harness TechED! We’ll help your business #TurnTheLightBulbOn when it comes to branding on social media!
Nicole Firebaugh | @nicole_fir
About Nicole Firebaugh
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