Previously I discussed how your About page on your blog is important for your branding. Today I want to go over your social media profile pages.

Why is this important and why should you do it now? Well - you never know when you might need it and you want to be ready when you do!

My Mistake
An example - recently Darren Rowse had a "Social Media Love-In" on his blog. I immediately started adding links to the social media sites I use the most. Then I realized that on some of them I still hadn't added any information about me on my profile pages, or customized where I could. So then I scrambled over to each of the sites and did it all in a hurry. I could have avoided that if I would have done it when I first had a chance.

What you should do
If you are like most bloggers you probably have accounts at Twitter,Digg, StumbleUpon, Facebook and other social media sites. Most of them let you have a profile page where you can add some information about yourself. If you use these sites very often - they become part of your public image that you show to the world.

You want your profile page to convey a professional image, if you are blogging for a business. At any rate - you want it to reflect your goals and let people learn a little bit about you.

Most social media sites let you have at least have a short bio you can write and let you upload a picture. In a previous post in the Building your Brand series I talked about using your picture on your blog. You should use it on your profile pages also. And again, use the same one for consistency. It really does help people to remember who you are.

Usually they have a place where you can add the url of at least one blog. Sometimes more. Sometimes in the bio section you can use html and add links to all your blogs. Some allow even more customization of your profile page.

Twitter
Twitter is a good example. It lets you control some of the design aspects of your page. You can choose a background color and the color of some of the text too. You can also upload a background image! This image can be your logo or some other image you want people to see.

Keep in mind that because of the way the twitter page is set up, you want to either use a small version of your logo or create a version that is tall and skinny - rather than horizontal. In my case I made a tall skinny logo for my main blog and a smaller box with the logo of another blog of mine. Some other good examples of customizing their twitter pages are Wendy Piersall and Darren's.

Do you know of anybody else who has a nice twitter page? Any advice to share with others for customizing and adding information to your social media profile pages?