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LinkedIn is a surprisingly strong tool for a more personalized form of marketing.

Like Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn has become one of those tools that every growing business or self-employed professional should be taking advantage of. Not only does the site allow you to come into contact with others who could grow your company, but also to fill out your professional profile with factors like experience, education, and recommendations.

But even though your LinkedIn profile could be one of your most powerful marketing pieces, there is an even better reason to have one and add to it over time: it just might be the first thing a potential customer sees about you in Google.

Although business websites typically have a strong enough page rank to get listed above a LinkedIn profile, most individual names don’t. And since a lot of customers will search online for information about vendors or business owners, there’s a strong chance that your LinkedIn profile could end up as one of your most often viewed resources – even above your page on the company website.

Given that whatever the link says about you could end up being the first word for potential customers, it makes sense to add as much as you can. Don’t miss out on this chance to meet and influence high-level buyers.

Philosophically speaking, Twitter is it amazing invention in that it allows for direct contact between executives, celebrities, and other public personalities to their fans and followers without having to expose something like a phone number or personal e-mail address. That makes it easier than ever for executives and other VIPs to communicate one-on-one with the public, which can be a great thing for branding and public relations.

Of course, if a free-flow of information back and forth between a single person in the world is the upside, then the downside lies in the fact that too many of us tweet without thinking.

In other words, once something has been shared, expressed, or posted on Twitter, then you can’t really get it back. There are too many examples of public personalities trying to backtrack from something he tweeted to even count, but each of them carries an implicit warning: Twitter is a great marketing tool, but executives and business owners should be very careful about thinking before they share.

Don’t assume that something you put on the Internet – and especially Twitter – is going to stay personal or confidential. Count on your tweets being read by everyone you know, and even the public or media. Doing so might be an overly-cautious step, but it will also allow you to take advantage of the best of Twitter without feeling the worst.

Don’t worry, this isn’t a pop quiz to determine your level of optimism. Instead, what we are asking about is how much work you’ve done on your search engine optimization campaign away from your own business website.

This is an important question, because everything you can do to your pages – from adjusting things like titles and tags to adding content to your blog – only represents about half the battle. To make it past the rest of your competitors, and grab one of the best spots on Google, you also have to build lots of outside links to your pages… the other half of SEO.

While this tends to be a slower and more time-consuming part of the process, there are two things you can do to speed it up. First, post awesome content that other websites will want to feature and link to. And secondly, make sure that you’re regularly posting links from your social profiles back to your own website.

Although optimizing your own pages should be a first step in your SEO plan, don’t forget to start looking for outside links, too. Otherwise, your search engine glass is never going to be more than half-full.

Most of us went to high schools where having the right kind of look, not to mention a good circle of friends, was an important part of fitting in. Now, with the popularity of social media marketing – which seems a lot like high school in many ways – these are important considerations again.

One question you need to ask yourself is: will the other kids laugh at your social media campaign?

Specifically, what we’re getting at is having a custom look that fits the style of your company. It’s not difficult to get custom pages for Twitter or Facebook that match your business perfectly, and they are well worth the expense, since they help you stand out from the competition and make your company more “popular” than it would be with default social media settings.

A good business web design or online marketing partner will point you in the right direction and come up with social media pages that get you noticed for all the right reasons. If you don’t already have someone looking out for you over the Internet, get in touch with us today and find out how easy it is to get started.