When promoting your dog training business, your personal social media profiles need to send a professional message. Why? Because your personal profiles also reflects your business.

Poor-quality images, badly written copy, and a lack of consistent information can affect the perception of curious viewers who might be checking you (and your business) out.

You’d be amazed at how often someone stumbling over your content for the first time will visit your profile. They want to know if you’re worth following — time is precious, after all. And optimizing your social media profiles can help you build that trust from the very beginning.

Update your Bio and About sections

Let’s check your About and Bio sections first. Both of these should be clear enough to tell a complete stranger exactly what you do, who you do it for, and, if you have a location, the area you cover. You don’t want to leave viewers guessing.

Include some personality in your Bio. Let visitors get a glimpse into who you are, your interests and hobbies, and what’s important to you. Remember people do business with people, not businesses, so showing off your human qualities makes you more friendly and approachable.

Don’t forget to add your website URL to your Bio and “Work and education” sections like this:

Each bit of bold text is a link to the relevant website. Doing this makes it easy for visitors to learn more about you.

Your business contact info should also be easy to find. Make it easy for people to reach out if they want to work with you.

First impressions count

All social media platforms are predominantly visual. That means your images need to stand out — and not in a bad way. Always use high-quality photos (no fuzzy, blurred selfies with half your thumb over the lens)! Not sure how to start taking better photos? Check out our guide here.

If you have multiple personal social media profiles it pays to use the same profile picture for all of them. This helps people link them all together as one entity.

For your personal profile cover image, you can use a photo that speaks to who you are and what your values might be.

Here Melissa clearly shows she’s a dog person who loves spending time in the great outdoors:

A picture speaks a thousand words so use that to your advantage. What do you want your profile pictures to say about you?

Consistency check

If you’re using social media as part of your marketing (and you’re missing out if you’re not!) it’s important all of the places where you live online present a unified look and feel.

You want someone who’s checking your website, your Facebook profile, your Instagram profile, and your YouTube channel to be left in no doubt they’re all part of a larger whole — you and your business.

Create a “look and feel”

When you’re choosing social media marketing images, fonts, or other media (music, graphics, or icons), tie them into your business branding. Think about:

• Your business colors
• Tinted overlays you use
• Your website fonts (if you add text before uploading)
• Specific styling you use

Not sure what I mean? Check out our blog about the secret sauce to great branding.

Styling your profile images, cover images, and social posts to be on brand is one part, but it’s also important to have a cohesive feel, or theme, to your profiles. You want to be sending the same visual message regardless of which platform you’re using.

Imagine how confusing it would be to see someone’s Instagram profile where they visually portray themselves as outgoing, loud, and vivacious, then finding a Facebook profile where they look reserved. Then to muddy things further, in their website images they appear super formal and clinical. You’d be pretty confused as to who’d you’ll be working with!

Don’t forget your messaging

Finally, the last part that often gets overlooked is how you come across: your messaging, voice, and tone.

When you write your Bio and About information, use the same tone of voice across all the platforms. For example, don’t use the third person (she/he/they) on Facebook and first person (I/we) on Instagram. If you’re relaxed and chatty in one place, be relaxed and chatty everywhere.

And it’s worth mentioning again: clearly include details of what you do, and who you do it for. It’s important to get that message front and center. Repeat it on every profile, even if you need to tweak the wording to fit as necessary.

Get the most out of your social media profiles

Your social media profiles are prime marketing real estate. They’re there so someone stumbling over your content for the first time can check out who you are, what you do, and what you stand for.

They want to know if it’s worth their time following you: can you help them with their problems, and do you share their values, views, and interests? And finally, do they want to take their interest in your business further and work with you?

By making it easy for people to answer those questions you’ll see your audience grow and your social media marketing take off.