Entering today’s digital era can seem confusing and for many it may look overwhelming at first. Developing a schedule and staying consistent will help you maintain your social presence on the various social media platforms you decide to pursue and build a digital presence of your brand. Before you know it, it will be like maintaining the oil in your car once you establish your social media foundation.

We want to help fuel your presence so we are sharing a few tips you can add to your toolbox on how you can build, maintain, and stay engaged to your target audience.

After you have your social media profiles up and running, many people forget to pay attention to their profiles. It is easy to do as you are focused on posting, tweeting, and uploading videos. However, in order to maintain a positive image on social media networks a bit of maintenance is required.  You need to make sure that you keep your social media profiles up to date at all times.

The social media profile is extremely important, so here are some things that you can do to make sure that you are getting the most out of your profile.

If your customer comes to your Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, or other social media page and sees a profile picture that is too large, too small, or out of focus, they are going to get a quick first impression that is not good.  Most people will immediately think that if they cannot get their profile picture right, what else are they going to mess up? Make sure that you check the size requirements for each page and keep your photos at that size so they look their best and you make a good first impression.

There is no real way to know the preference of our consumers for sharing content. For this reason, you want to make it as easy as possible for your consumers to share your content on whatever platform that they prefer.  Use the buttons for the different social media sites so that if your customer likes Facebook, they can share it there, if they want to pin an image to Pinterest, they can do so easily. Remember, you want them to share your information and in order for them to do this, you will need to make it as easy on them as possible.

When a person hears about your event on a social network it is important for them to know how to buy tickets or register. When you are creating descriptions for your event make sure that it is clear where the official registration for the event will occur.

Many users may click on the I’m going tab and not have any idea that they actually need to register for the event. Include easy to follow links when you are promoting your company events online.

Despite what you may have heard, SEO is not dead and keywords are not a thing of the past. Social profiles are included in search engine results, which mean that your profile should include keyword rich text. The more that a keyword is used in your profile; the more likely you are going to be associated with that keyword on the social media platform. Make sure to use a keyword tool such as Google’s in order to make sure that your business is associated with the appropriate industry keywords.

Remember, social media is all about engaging your consumers. You will want to make sure that you are encouraging your customers to leave reviews about their experiences with your business. They may leave reviews directly on your Facebook page or on other review sites such as Yelp or Urbanspoon.

Hashtags, phrases or words that are prefixed with the # symbol provide a way to group messages on social media sites. This is a great way to make your content or event stand out. Your hashtag can be anything from the name of your event to a special promotion to something simple. Make sure that your hashtag is descriptive so that it will keep your followers interested.

As your social network communities begin to grow it is easy for your customers to begin to feel as though they have been lost in the crowd. One way to avoid having your consumer’s feel this way is to use their names when you are responding to their comments or questions.

These are just some basics that can help differentiate you between your competitors. Creating different channels of communication and engaging your customers to show that you are with them along their journey and can be the difference of a sale or not. Fuel your presence with tools that lead to success.