Critique My Profile

“Critique My Profile” Episode 2: Are you on the right lists?

by Marian Schembari on June 23, 2010

This week’s episode of Critique My Profile features Jeffrey Pia (@JeffreyPia), a star web designer and developer extraordinaire. Check out the video and my tips for Jeffrey below:

Some actionable tasks for Jeffrey:

Bio

  • Super great example of someone with a passionate, informative and compelling bio.
  • To make it more accessible to non-techies, maybe change the w3c thing? Or not.
  • What’s with the Facebook link? Change so it’s your LinkedIn profile, personal website, or…?? Company? AMatchMadeInHalo.com? FB is touchy for some people (including myself), so it might not be the best place to send potential followers.

Background:

  • Pretty background, but what is the logo for? Unclear what you’re brand is.
  • Use your background to make it super clear who you are and what you do.

Followers:

  • Being on other people’s lists is important as it shows other people find you interesting. While you can’t control what lists you’re on, go through relevant lists of other web designers and follow the people that make those lists. Everybody wins!
  • Here are some great lists online of web designers using Twitter. Have a poke around their feed (that sounds dirty, sorry) and see what they’re talking about:
  1. 100 Web Designers to Follow on Twitter
  2. 50+ Designers to Follow on Twitter
  3. 30 Top Web Designers On Twitter

Tweets:

  • You spend time connecting with people and answering questions, this is great!
  • HOWEVER. People will follow you for your knowledge and not just your social chit-chat. Find a way to be valuable to everyone.
  • Split your tweets (roughly) into thirds: One-third is conversation with people, one-third is retweets, one-third is your stuff. “Your stuff” can be blog posts, info about your business, talking about your day, anything! People worry about being shameless self-promoters, forgetting that people follow them for a reason!
  • Try out a daily or weekly “feature”. For example, feature a website every week that you think is really well done, or give a “web design tip of the day”. Add value and get people to come back.

Alright guys, what do you think? Did you find this video helpful? Do you have more ideas for Jeffrey ? Leave your comments below! And if you want me to critique your profile, leave your Twitter handle in the comments.

If you’re interested in more video shenanigans, sign up for the Pajama Job Hunt! A 3-part video tutorial on using Twitter as the ULTIMATE job hunting tool. Click here for more info.

{ 21 comments }

“Critique My Profile”: I’m giving away free advice!

by Marian Schembari on June 12, 2010

Thanks for stopping by! Make sure you sign up for my FREE newsletter. Get free consulting and all sorts of goodies delivered straight to your inbox. (It’ll be awesome.)

Over the past month I’ve been getting more and more emails from people requesting that I critique or evaluate their social media profiles. Now, this has kind of been my job for the past year – helping authors and friends and companies expand their online presence – but that always involves implementation, months of work and commitment like you wouldn’t believe. Some of you simply want personalized tips and tasks you can do RIGHT NOW that are going to help you grow.

As one request said, “There is always room for expansion. You mention being able to help people do better with social media and I’d like to know if you see any area where I could do something different that might be more effective.”

Rachel Vincent commented on my Twitter post asking if there was “a service where a human being who is really solid with Twitter would look at Twitter profiles and tell people: ‘Hey this is how you are coming across’. Kind of like the services that evaluate resumes and let people know how they are coming across there.”

Genius, I tell you! And I don’t know anyone else who’s doing it and I don’t know why I didn’t think of this myself. Enter “Critique My Profile”. (I was gonna call it Pimp My Profile, but that was taken. Le sigh.)

So Here’s How It Works

1.   In the comment section, post your Twitter handle.

That’s all I need, but you can ask anything you want about how to grow your presence, tweak your bio, modify your tweets… The sky’s the limit and I am open to any and all questions.

2.  Then I post a weekly video critiquing different profiles.

This is where the fun part comes in! Every week I’ll post a short video critiquing a different Twitter account. Keep in mind the tone of my blog: this is how I’ll be “on tape”. If you’re nervous about being torn to shreds, don’t worry, I’m not that bitchy… But I AM no-nonsense and this is a Bullshit Free Zone. So if you can’t take a decent criticism, don’t leave your info.

That being said, I hope that doesn’t scare you away. If you’re smart enough to be using Twitter, but feel like you’re not using it to the best of your ability, I know I can help. So get over yourself a little and take the plunge. In order to get the most out of social media you need to be willing to put yourself out there. If you’re scared to do it here you shouldn’t be doing it at all… And I honestly do want to help you kick some social media ass.

That’s it!

Doesn’t matter if you’re a brand-new Twitter user or you’ve been tweeting for a year. There is always room for growth and having a fresh pair of eyes look at how you’re presenting yourself can be ridiculously beneficial for your brand, business, whatever.

**It would, however, be helpful if I knew your goals. A truly great Twitter bio makes it blatantly obvious what you do or what you want to be doing. If you think your Twitter profile isn’t as up-to-date as it should be, let me know in the comments how I can best help you.

***And if you would be so kind to RT this, that would be reeeaaaalllly helpful. I want to reach as many people as possible with this, so spread the word!

{ 88 comments }

Next Entries →