One thing we have to add to our todo list is reviewing our social media profiles to account for platform changes.

It can be hard to keep up to date

Every web platform releases little tweaks and amendments that they think improve the platform, but it can be very hard to keep up to date with all those changes.

And a minor change on the platform might have a surprisingly large effect on your profile.

The technical limitations that a platform impose on us force us to rewrite our copy to fit.

Linkedin Profile Summary Rendering had Changed

I reviewed my linkedin profile recently and noticed that my carefully crafted initial summary sentences no longer fit into the rendered summary of the public profile. The email address that I had edited the copy to display in the summary, no longer rendered fully. Something had changed:

Are you finding it hard to take your software testing and development to the next level? I help, by understanding how you work as a ‘system’.

I have 10 free days a month to work onsite (UK,EU) and remotely (rest of world). Connect, with a message, and let me know what you want help with: ✉ alan@compendiumdev.co.uk

Note: the newline is not rendered in the final summary but it is in the full summary, which means we can have a slightly different rendered format for both views

Which now rendered as:

Work with the formatting constraints

I amended this to become:

Are you finding it hard to take your software testing and development to the next level? I help, by understanding how you work as a ‘system’.

I can work onsite (UK,EU) and remotely (rest of world). Connect, with a message, and let me know what you want help with: ✉ alan@compendiumdev.co.uk

Review your profile Periodically

We have to figure out how to review our profiles as other people see them.

And keep on top of this.

I do not do this as often as I should, but clearly we need to spend some time every month or at least quarterly to review the technical capabilities and rendering changes that have been made to social media.

Ways to review

At a minimum:

• If the platform offers search facility then search for yourself
  • make sure you appear
  • make sure your listing stands out
• click on your profile and review it as a logged in user
  • preferably a ’test account’ rather than your main account as sites often show the owner a different view than a n other user
• open the profile page in an incognito mode so you see it as a non-logged in user

Results of Review Of Linkedin

On LinkedIn I noticed that:

• my profile image didn’t stand out, so I added a circle around the image to make it ‘visually different in search’
• my profile summary didn’t fully render for logged in users, so I amended the copy again
• my current experience wasn’t rendered in Incognito mode (I was sure I had this displayed, but I had to amend my public profile settings to make this render)

Results of Review on Patreon

On Patreon I noticed that I wasn’t appearing in search. In fact, hardly anyone was appearing in search.

Patreon had changed their search algorithm to search the ’name’ rather than the ’title'.

I had to amend my name to include the search terms I wanted to be found for.

i.e. rather than “Alan Richardson” I have “Alan Richardson (Software Testing and Development)” so if people search for “Software”, “Software Testing” or “Software Development” they will find me.

This is a tactic that I also use on YouTube and Instagram to use the rendered fields to display more information than they otherwise would.

We have to let the technology constraits influence the copy that we write to be findable.

Summary

Build time into your schedule to review your social media platform profiles for rendering and findability.

• you want to stand out
• you want to be included in their search algorithm
• you spend time on your copywriting so you want it to be rendered
• check as both a loggedin user and as an anonymous user