Did you know the average American spends nine hours a day engaging with digital media – and people spend an average of 21 minutes each day on Instagram and over 15 minutes on Twitter?

Now there is no excuse not to have a presence on social media!

1. Nothing is worse than something half done … Complete your profile!

Take a close look at your social media channels, specifically LinkedIn. Does it provide a comprehensive overview of your accomplishments, skills, and goals? Have you added rich media to your profile, helping to visually showcase your professional story and accomplishments? Whether it’s a thought provoking article you wrote or an info graphic you designed showing the top trends impacting your industry, the possibilities are endless for what you can share on LinkedIn to add a richer and more visual component to your professional discussions.

2. A picture is worth a thousand words.

When in doubt, use a visual! Photos have shown to be the most popular type of social media content for engagement. They get the most shares on Facebook and the most re-tweets on Twitter. In fact, Instagram has the most engagement of any social media channel and it’s not a coincidence that both Instagram and Pinterest were able to gain a lot of traction and see more success than other failed social networks like MySpace or Foursquare. Sometimes words aren’t even necessary. Online, people do judge a book by its cover, so it is important to put thought into the images you post. Use free tools like Canva PicMonkey to update and edit photos on your social media platforms. Canva specifically offers templates for social media cover photos and headers which make designing a breeze.

3. It is not a one-way street: interact with others!

You wouldn’t expect to go to a networking event and not talk to anyone about their interests, right? The same can be the said about social media. Don’t be the company or person that only shares links all day. The purpose of social media is to be social and engage with other users. That means interacting on a regular basis. Take a look at some of your past social media posts. How many of them include @mentions of other people? How many of your interactions are replies to other posts? The secret to success on social media is engagement with others!

4. You don’t have the same conversation with everyone. Optimize your content for each platform.

Maintaining accounts across all of the major social media platforms does not mean posting the same thing on four different sites every day. To be most effective on social media, format your content specifically for each platform. You will need photos for Instagram, long posts for LinkedIn, videos, photos and memes for Facebook and short and snappy announcements for Twitter. All of your posts should be different, even if they are delivering the same message or linking to the same content.

5. You can’t win them all.

Not all content will be popular, but that’s OK. There are a few types of content that typically don’t get a lot of likes and shares, including testimonials, charity posts, press features and important blog posts. These are really important pieces of content when it comes to establishing your validity in the market, yet they aren’t the type of posts that typically get a lot of attention. Just because this type of content isn’t getting likes or shares, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be posting it. It may not be popular, but it helps build a foundation for your company and ultimately strengthens your brand!

Have any other tips on how to improve your personal brand on social media? Join the conversation below or connect with me on Twitter: @Cgrothues