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by Rosemary O’Neill

Social profiles have gotten a lot of tweaking in the past year.Â Have you kept up with all of the updates?

Today’s the day to roll up your sleeves and get it done.

Here’s a handy cheat sheet:

1. Twitter header

A few months ago, Twitter started including a photo header at the top of your profile.Â It should be a graphic 1252 pixels wide by 626 pixels tall, maximum size of 5MB.Â You can easily change it by going to your Twitter profile settings page.Â Here are the details straight from Twitter: https://support.twitter.com/articles/127871.

2. LinkedIn company page header

Not to be outdone, LinkedIn now allows you to have a profile header for your company page.Â The graphic should be a .png, .jpg, or .gif no more than 2MB.Â Size recommended is 646 pixels wide by 220 pixels tall or larger (you can crop on the page). Here’s a handy video on setting up a company page: http://youtu.be/WiTQL_M_fv0.

3. Facebook cover photo

You should already have this one nailed, but just in case…your Facebook cover photo should ideally be 851 pixels wide and 315 pixels tall, and under 100KB (for fastest load time).Â Here are Facebook’s recommendations: http://www.facebook.com/help/125379114252045/.Â Remember that Facebook frowns on calls to action or overtly promotional content within the cover image.Â It’s intended to be a compelling photo or graphic, not a banner ad.

4. Pinterest business pages

Your favorite slack-time hangout just put on a business suit. If your business is suited to graphic imagery, or you want to flex your creative juices, you might want to create a business account (or convert your existing personal account, if you’ve been using it to support your business). Learn all of the details from the Pinterest announcement: http://blog.pinterest.com/post/35710687813/new-tools-for-businesses-in-the-pinterest-community.

5. Your own site needs some tweaks

When is the last time you spiffed up your own blog or home page? Do you have a widget on there from last year’s conference? Take 10 minutes and look at your own site with a newcomer’s eye, or have a friend look — a refresh might end the year on a high note.

6. Update your avatar

I’ll step forward and say “guilty”Â on this one.Â My avatar is from a favorite photo that was taken 7 years ago.Â Ouch.Â It’s time to cowboy up and get a new picture taken.Â How old is your avatar?

7. Forum signatures

If you participate in online communities around the web, you probably have customized forum signatures in some of them. Usually these are appended to the end of your posts, and include a favorite motto, sometimes a link to your site, or your bio information. These can get totally forgotten in the day to day hustle. Take a moment today and fix the broken links, update your job title, or breathe some new life into your forum signatures.

8. Stop procrastinating on Google+

I know, it involves “code” and it seems really tricky (it sortof is).Â Many posts have been written about how to implement the author tag for Google+, but the best one I found (and the one that actually worked for me) was this step-by-step from Social Media Examiner: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/google-author-tags/.Â Do this one today.

If you systematically go through and complete these 8 minor tasks, you’ll get a bounce into the new year with a fresh face to the world.

If you look up–under the logo for Successful Blog–you’ll see the words content that is organized, thorough, and relevant. That means I plan to capture and present the basics for everything. I also plan to make sure that those posts–like this one–offer information for everyone, not just new bloggers. Oh and, my other plan is that these posts won’t be boring. 🙂

Well, it used to say that. Now, we just live it.

I’ve hidden a posting Easter egg of sorts in this one. Hope most of you don’t have it already.

This post is based on Duncan Riley’s Building blog traffic for newbies. If you already know the basics, read the 31 comments that follow the post.

Duncan lays out six main points he pulled together when he realized that people seemed to know little about promoting blogs. I’ll list them here [with my notes], and you can get the detail from the post.

Don’t use blogrolling for your site links. It stuffs up search engines.
Pinging is good, but trackbacks and comments are better.
Offer to exchange links in your links section [in the sidebar].
Link to small sites without exchange through sidebar or a post.
Submit your blog to all search engines [and directories].

And what we both agree is the most important one:

Post regularly, [consistently], and often.

I’d also like to add two if I might.

Join a forum in your niche. It offers natural opportunities to talk about your blog.
Find websites in your niche that would like to list your link.

Of course, the best promotion is quality content when the traffic gets there.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

PS. Do we have to use the word “newbies”? Has anyone got a better one?

Time for a Tune-Up: 8 Simple Updates to do Today