Spring Cleaning Your Professional Online Presence

03/28/2016 6:51 PM | Deleted user


WRITTEN BY: KELLY WINTER MFTI, CLC

Once the weather starts to warm up it’s time to open our windows again and breathe fresh air into our homes, offices, and lives. Packed away are the heavy, dark fabrics and colors of Autumn and Winter. We clean our homes from top to bottom and plant bulbs in the garden to bloom and bask in the summer sun.  This is a perfect time for us to channel the renewed energy of Spring and apply it to our professional lives; namely, our online presence.

In a previous career, I owned a retail clothing shop and one of the cardinal rules in retail is: change it up! Ever notice that when it’s been a few months since you’ve visited a store, everything has changed? Maybe the layout of the aisles is the same but the merchandise is different and so is the set dressing.

We can morph the retail cardinal rule and apply it to our professional presence online. We change things seasonally in our offices (or as much as we can control if working in an agency setting) so why not our online “offices?” When was the last time you updated your website or various online profiles? The idea is to keep your site (or page, profile, etc.) fresh and involved. The more engaged you are, the more active your page appears.

In the spirit of Spring revival, here are some tips to update your online presence and keep things fresh.

1)    Change Visuals

  • a.    Update headshots: Very few of us like to take professional photos, but take a look at yours. Are you wearing a sweater? A jacket? Dark colors? Inside a closed up room? Take some new photos to freshen your look and match the season we’re in.  Try to wear lighter colors and take a nature shot. You can make an indoor picture seem outdoorsy by posing in front of a backdrop with an outdoor scene or pastel colors.
  • b.    Brighten your page colors: Switch any background colors that you can control to lighter shades of your current color. You don’t have to go drastic here, just a bit lighter or brighter will breathe new life to your site. UxMovement has a great article about using color psychology on websites. You can read it here
2)    Update Profiles
  • a.    Keep it relevant: When we first create our website or any profiles, it is not uncommon to be in a different place professionally than we are presently. How long ago was that? Have you developed a bit of a niche since then? Have you lessened your focus on something your old content is highlighting?
  • b.    Add any new certifications: We are constantly updating our skills, so make sure your audience knows it. You can list these on your About page too.
  • c.     Add/Delete any insurances: This one is easy to overlook because contracting with an insurance company gets us listed on their site and our phone starts ringing. Don’t forget to let your own pool of potential clients know.  
  • d.    Check ALL of your profiles: Copy/paste the same updated info to all the sites you are listed on. Including:

  •                                           i.    Psychology Today
  •                                         ii.    Counseling California
  •                                        iii.    Good Therapy
  •                                        iv.    CAMFT
  •                                         v.    CAMFT-CSJV Chapter
  •                                        vi.    LinkedIn
  •                                       vii.    Any others
3)    Streamline Social Media
  • a.    Check for consistency:  Make sure your message is the same no matter where someone finds you. Copy/paste the same verbiage in your About sections.
  • b.    Create a uniformed look: Use the same profile picture and banner for each account. This should complement the look of your website.
4)    Use a Social Media Manager
  • a.    How many of us have gone to post something on our Facebook business page and checked our personal notifications while there, ‘just real quick’?  Thirty minutes and two quizzes later, we realize that we forgot to post in the first place?
  • b.    Check out apps like Hootsuite, TweetDeck, or Buffer. These apps post the same post to all of your Social Media sites at once.
  • c.     Lessen time spent posting, keeping you from falling into the time suck that is the Internet. Since it’s a separate app, you don’t even see your pages when posting.
  • d.    Hit ALL our followers: The same post will show up on all of the tied Social Media accounts. That way our Instagrammers are seeing the same thing as our Facebook followers (often a different demographics).
  • e.    Scheduling future posts. In just a few hours you can schedule your posts for the entire month. Major productivity increase!

It is best to allow yourself a definite start and end time for all of this – say, one weekend. You can take some new headshots during the week and figure out the changes to your online accounts. Take the weekend to divide and conquer your online presence. Use the energy of this Springtime to really spruce up your online persona – attracting more clients and great colleagues.    

 ABOUT THE AUHOR: Kelly Winter, MFTI, CLC

Kelly Winter MS, MFTI is a Marriage and Family Therapist Registered Intern and Certified Life Coach. She works in private practice, employed and supervised by Scott Polenz, LMFT. She uses her life experiences and education to help people optimize transitional phases of life, specifically divorce and remarriage, thereby improving their future.  In her off-time, she serves on the CAMFT-CSJV Chapter Board of Directors as Secretary. She is a pop culture geek, fempreneur, epic TV-fandom junkie, and a raving 12 - Go Seahawks! You can read more HERE


Comments

  • 07/31/2016 7:22 PM | Deleted user
    Nice article Kelly!
    Link  •  Reply

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