You could simply set up these profiles, but to get the most out of them you need to keep them looking as “lived in” as possible. That means updating semi-regularly and connecting or being friends with other users and having a dialog or conversation with some of them. With the exception of Google+, all of these services have API’s so you can update them with tools on a scheduled basis such as Hootsuite or Bufferapp.
Once you have these accounts looking lived in, you can start pointing links to them. You want to use optimal anchor text (ie, the person’s name or name of the company in most cases). However, you do want there to be some variation. If 100% of the links pointing to a site have a 100% anchor text match, it look manipulated and and artificial, so mix it up a bit. You can do some interlinking but be careful: interlinking all of them, creating a nest of sites, link brothel, or artificial link pyramid designed just to manipulate link equity will stick out and will probably be discounted.
While I only spoke about four social sites in this article, there are hundreds of websites you can create profiles on for ORM. It doesn’t make sense to try and set up and populate all of them. If you want to establish them and prevent someone else from squatting on them, use a service like KnowEm. Once you have them secured, you can cherry pick the best or most appropriate ones to flesh out and work with.
So what are the takeaways from this post:
- When performing ORM, set up and register individual or business profiles
- The most important services currently are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Plus
- Use a service like KnowEm to secure secondary profiles
- Flesh out the most important or relevant profiles
- Come up with a plan for updating the profiles on a regular basis
- Develop and interlink the profiles without making it look overly manipulated
- Give the profiles a human feel and build trust signal by having back and forth conversations, interactions, and engagement with other profiles, especially profiles with established trust signals
photo credit: Shutterstock/82048177
