Articles
About Profile Pictures and Company logos
by Paula van Dun Retired As my friend Joseph Botelho always says "Networking is a contact Sport" and he is right about that. Social media is about establishing good contacts with other people which can be achieved by being active in regards to posting content, comments that add value and of course to share content of others that you consider useful for others.On social media your main focus should be on interacting, not selling and advertising. If you do that people will visit your profile. Your profile will do the selling for a large part and so does your profile picture once that people know you are sharing and promoting good stuff.
However people connect with people, not with company logos (or pets, children, cartoons, etc). In fact APSense does not allow it; it is unfortunate that those are sill being approved by members that have the privilege to approve profile pictures.
I fully understand that businesses socialize and are active with the objective to gain more customers and to earn some money. So i can understand that many upload their business logo as a profile picture in an attempt to brand their business.
As I pointed out a company (logo) is not you, even not when you are the sole owner. And people are more likely to connect with a person than with a logo.
So. How do you attach your face to your business?
It is not all that hard. Make sure you have a well set up profile with a picture of you as adult and list your business. Same goes for the APSense business center where you can submit pictures: your logo and product pictures. You can also pin these and/or use your logo or product pictures in articles and rev pages. All these pictures including the ones embedded in the RSS of your company blog will show on your APSense brand page 9 if you haven't got one yet, set one up today!).
Do all those thing and it won't be long for people attach your picture to a company.
The best example would be Wincer who is the founder of APSense. I think most people know his face and that he owns APSense and many other sites. He did not post his logo as a profile picture but through a lot of hard work and yet taking time to engage and interact with other members.
By using a logo as profile picture you are limiting yourself and closing doors!
Your face is yours and it will always be there and look the same (except maybe the color of your hair and some additional wrinkles in the course of time).
A company logo is attached to 1 company. A face can be attached to multiple businesses and/or opportunities. I.e. I am owning a graphic design service, a traffic exchange and several others. In future I may be involved in Turkish real estate. I would restrict myself severely with branding on social media sites if i had either one up as a profile picture.
Yes, you may argue 'but I have only one company...'
But what if your company goes under, is sold or merges with another company under a new name? What if you are promoting an opportunity and that opportunity disappears or worse you find out much later that the opportunity was a scam? Such things happen all the time. Would you like to be branded as that logo? Once branded well it is hard to get rid of a certain image.
In the unlikely case that a well known business ceases to exist i.e. APSense, I would I would not bother to click on posts showing the APSense logo as a profile picture knowing that the company was gone. I would however click on posts that has a profile picture of Wincer. Because I know him as a person and a skilled programmer and knowledgeable in many other internet marketing related fields.
I hope you all understand what I am trying to convey here. What I am saying is that people follow people and they do that mainly because they make them feel good. I read somewhere that some people are embarrassed to put their own picture up because they do not look like a Madonna or Adonis.
Let me tell you that I have many friends online and offline that objectively speaking are ugly as hell. But I love them an online I follow them because they make me feel good; they all enriched my live in one way or the other.
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About Paula van Dun 
Retired
5,279 connections, 88 recommendations, 13,330 honor points.Joined APSense since, October 3rd, 2010, From Kuşadası, Turkey.
Created on Dec 31st 1969 18:00. Viewed 0 times.
Comments
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Paula van Dun
RetiredI guess we name things differently. I refer to building connections as social media marketing which is interaction with other members on a personal level. I refer to building a brand, product or service as social media advertising. In what I call social media advertising like the paid ads on i.e. Facebook or here on APSense with the paid ads on the side and the user ads I also would use my logo. So on APSense you can do both where one thing enforces the other. So I advertise with logos. When I recommend a service I do that as a person. Oct 20th 2012 14:30 |
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Paula van Dun
RetiredPlease if you are privileged to approve profile pictures do not approve celebs, cartoons, logos, children, pets, landscapes, product pics or anything what is not a picture of the face of that person as an adult Apr 13th 2013 05:21 1 Likes |
From a network marketing standpoint I completely agree with everything you are saying here. However when it comes to product based marketing I think exactly the opposite is true.
With product based sales one can't attach a picture to every label, and if the objective of a company is to brand their products, a face just won't do. When it comes to products, people still rely on the same methods - brands.
When I go to the store to buy my kids sports equipment for example - I look for one of two logo's. I look for starter and I look for nike. If I happen to see a pair of shoes made by nike while I am there shopping, I know right away those are somewhat quality shoes - because the company logo is branded. If I saw a picture of Eli Manning (star football player) I know he knows a lot about sports and sports equipment - but still his face as branded as it may be is not going to sway me from the company brand.
The question one must decide is - are they trying to brand their business by being social - in which case they should be using an image of themselves; or are they trying to brand product in which case they should be using social media for company branding and awareness not the act of being social.
If the later of those two is why a company is using social media, then they should realize apsense - may not be the right place for them.
Oct 20th 2012 14:18