Social media as a selling tool is on the rise. Many sales reps are scrambling to catch up with the top performing early adopters of social selling. But social selling success requires the appropriate planning and laying the right groundwork.

All the social strategy and flawlessly-executed engagement tactics will get you nowhere if you haven’t put thought and time into creating compelling social profiles. Have you visited a website recently that looked like it hadn’t been updated since the 1999? How did that impact your view of the company and their credibility? Not great, right? How you put your social media presence together can have the same effect, so let’s spend spend some time making it right.

Your Facebook Profile

By nature, your Facebook profile is going to be the most personal of your social media channels. However, that doesn’t mean your prospects won’t come looking for you once you make contact with them. That’s why it’s important to start with a stellar and clean Facebook profile.

Review your privacy settings and make sure only your friends have access to your photos and posts to your wall. This will help prevent a friend from ruining your professional facade with a poorly-timed tagged photo or post. It’s ok to provide access to some of your photos, but make sure they showcase your personality in a way that does not hurt your credibility. Also, make sure that you update your employment status to your current position and company — this shows that you have pride in your employer. Lastly, if your company has a Facebook page (and they should), make sure you are a fan.

Your Twitter Profile

Create a handle that’s easy for your clients and prospects to find and remember. If your name is taken, try adding an initial or abbreviating your last name and stay away from numbers and underscores because they’re hard to share verbally and tough for your audience to recall.

Include your role and company's Twitter handle in your bio, as well as a personal tidbit or two, to showcase your personality and add a human element. A clean template to follow is: personal fact, role at company, what you tweet. This clarifies your affiliation, shows some personality, and sets expectations for what you will share.

Your Linkedin Profile

If you’re on LinkedIn, make sure you’ve completed 100% of your profile. Pick a good headshot and headline that lets people know who you are, what you look like and your area of expertise. LinkedIn provides a helpful gauge that shows you how complete your profile is and what you have left to add.

More recently, on the “See who's viewed my profile” page, LinkedIn provides a robust recommendation engine of ways to perfect your profile. From adding skills, to following pages, the recommendations can help you get in front of the people you want to connect with.

For everything you need to add social media to your sales arsenal, download the free e-book The Simple Guide to Social Selling.