The other day Mashable broke the news of a new start-up company About.me being bought by AOL after only four days of going live. Since AOL bought this company, I figured there had to be some sort of value in what it offered. So, I headed over to About.me and began setting up my profile. At first I thought this was just another one of the cheesy services where you put in a few links to your stuff and added a picture and you were done.
My biggest issue with all these type of sites including this one is that I would never really use the link to direct my traffic away from my site to theirs. Why would I want to share a link over to a site I have no control over? They could place advertisements to any and everything on the blog. Also, there is no way for people to actually become a consumer of my products/services from a site like that without extra clicks over to my blog, Facebook page, etc. I think you should always be handing out a link directly to your about me page on your site if someone wants to learn more about you or your business.
So Why Have An Account Then?
Well, here’s the beauty of it. The number one reason I like having an account is that it gives you a good credible link back to your website. Remember, links help a lot in determining how a website ranks in the search engines. As more people begin setting up accounts there and it continues to age, I think the pagerank of the site will go up giving you an even more authoritative link back to you. This too can help with the rankings. Any time I can help the SEO of my site I am happy.
The second reason you should set up an account is that people will be on the site using it as a directory to find specific people as it continues to grow. By being placed in the directory, there is an option of someone finding me, and following the links over to my site. There’s a possibility that it will turn into a giant people directory to find others. Think of it as a yellow pages of online profiles.
The third reason is how easy it is to set up. You can literally set up an account here in under 3 minutes time. I took longer because I wanted to do my fourth reason which was the ability to customize. I fired up PhotoShop and began designing a fun and branded background for my page. This is huge to me as i always think it is important to keep a level of conformity in all your branding online. It took me about five minutes to design, another five to tweak and load. All together I spent about fifteen minutes setting up my new profile.
So in closing, while I don’t think this new platform is any major game changer in the social media realm, I do think it is something valuable and definitely worth the three minutes it will take you to set up. Go get yours now!
Originally Posted at: 210 Consulting- Social Media Advisors
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I am the Co-Founder of 210 Consulting- Social Media Advisors. I have traveled the country as a social media speaker. If you would like more information on any of the topics discussed in this blog, please contact me directly. We specialize in social media training, online consulting, and the creation of your own custom WordPress site.
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