It’s easy to believe in this social and mobile age that we are all a reality TV star… sometimes I wonder why I don’t have a stylist and makeup artist like all my friends on Bravo. And if you happen to be Kim Kardashian, your alternate realty means that you can use social media to take selfies all day long and post them with pithy comments. Make sure you have the duck lips though!
Silliness aside, there is etiquette to your profile picture that you will use on various social media platforms. The first rule for Profile pictures is to have a profile picture. If you are on a social media platform, you have already tacitly agreed to share information. With this in mind, please don’t leave your profile picture as the ambiguous grey head and shoulders. This suggests that you are not really using the account or worse, it might be spam.
For Facebook and other social media channels that are primarily to communicate with friends or family, you may unleash your creative self. Want to post a profile photo of you as a zombie? Have at it. There is a great new website that will help you do just that (http://www.deadyourself.com/walkers).
However, if have set up a Facebook business page or are on Linkedin, which is mostly used for sales of business to business products and services, please keep the following in mind:
- Use your actual photo. This isn’t the spot for your favorite Star Wars character. You will be judged by this and probably not in a good way on these platforms.
- This is not the place to have more than your head and shoulders.
- Clothing should be professional. A white collar and your head and shoulders are all you need. Not your most recent day at the beach, not before your big night out and definitely not when you’ve been out with your friends at the bar.No for Linkedin
- One of Instagram’s most compelling features is the ability to edit the image with any number of filters. And that is great for Instagram. Seriously, leave the Sepia toned, selfie on Instagram.
- Consider Linkedin and Facebook as your branding tool. If you change your image for your brand all the time you are causing unnecessary confusion. Unless you’ve done something drastic to change your appearance (again, see Kim K) there is no need to change your profile picture.
The main thing to remember is that you need to keep in mind what social media platform you are using, what its purpose is and then determine what Profile picture to use.
Have more questions about how to leverage social media in your internet marketing? Send them to me, Claiborne at grow@paveya.com.
Claiborne is the Business Development Manager for Paveya. She will share her not so technical thoughts about internet marketing through a Paveya blog each week. Contact her at cyarbrough@paveya.comThe Reality of Social Media Profile Pictures was last modified: February 25th, 2014 by
