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Using Twitter to Develop Your Personal Brand

Guest post by: JW Dicks

Article Overview: Today, most people are aware of the power of Twitter for networking, website promotion and communicating… but have you thought about the impact Twitter could have on your personal brand?

Using Twitter to Develop Your Personal Brand

In just a few short years, Twitter has become a household name. If you had told me five years ago that I would spend my time “tweeting” I would have thought you were crazy. Today, most people are aware of the power of Twitter for networking, website promotion and communicating… but have you thought about the impact Twitter could have on your personal brand? Twitter is ideally designed for personal branding-users have the ability to choose a color scheme, upload a picture, and send messages to an unlimited number of followers. The casual feel of the site gives users the freedom to incorporate their sense of humor and personal interests into their tweets-an opportunity that doesn’t exist with many other forms of communication. However, don’t let the simplicity fool you… as with all branding efforts, effective personal branding through Twitter requires a well-conceived plan. Below are five tips to get you started:

1) Put some thought into your layout. You don’t have to design a masterpiece, but you should spend some time on your Twitter layout to make sure it is consistent with your personal brand. Perhaps most importantly, choose a picture that shows you at your best. If you’re like most people, you’re a bit shy about using your picture in public-but resist the urge to use a company logo or some other image. When it comes to the colors of your profile, try to use the same colors as you have on your website, blog or other branding materials.

2) Engage experts in your field. Follow experts in your field and look for opportunities to contribute to their conversations. If they reply to you, you can bet that many of their followers will follow you. This is a great way to gain more followers-and it’s a great way to gain credibility in your field of work.

3) Self promotion should be subtle. Many experts suggest that no more than 20% of your tweets should be self promotion. More than that may make you look like a spammer-and that is not the brand any of us want to convey! In addition, even when you are promoting your blog posts, web site or special deals, make sure that you choose your words carefully. Twitter is not a place for an in-depth sales pitch.

4) Tweet once a day at minimum. If you’re tweeting less than once a day, you’re not going to connect with your followers. You need to build relationships in order to convey your brand-and that takes more than two tweets per week.

5) Be yourself. Don’t be stiff and boring. Display your sense of humor. Share some opinions. You don’t want to be overly controversial, obviously, but an interesting opinion is a great way to catch the attention of your followers.

Twitter provides a unique opportunity to engage your friends, clients and potential clients. Before diving in, make sure that you’ve identified your personal brand. Each action that you take should reflect that brand. Keep the guidelines we’ve covered above in mind, and you’ll be well on the way to projecting your personal brand through Twitter.

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Article Tags: branding agency, branding and marketing, branding companies, branding consultants, branding strategies, business development, business growth, business marketing, celebrity agent, client development, expert agent, JW dicks, Personal branding, personal branding expert



Related Forum Posts
Re: Using Twitter To Double Your Traffic? - I'm sure in many cases Twitter sends more traffic than Search Engines because most people don't have good enough SE rankings to get SE traffic. But anyone can get Twitter traffic. The problem is that Twitter traffic won't convert for the most part and SE traffic will. I'd venture to say that 98% of the time getting just 100 visitors from search is better than getting 2000+ from Twitter.
How to Use Twitter to Market Products? - How do you use Twitter to market products? Has the Twitter route given you good results? Please share your experience and ideas on how to use Twitter to take a product to the customers. Thank you in advance.
Re: Social Media Works If You Do It Right... - Hi Michelle, Ah, but it seems hashtags are still being used by a lot of people - including Twitter! So I would still use them for your keywords. It's just that if you are searching for something on Twitter you can either go the #hashtag route, or do a direct search on the Twitter homepage. I guess you could use #hashtags when searching on the Twitter homepage as well! DH
Re: Facebook or Twitter? - Thanks for the feedback guys! I personally started with Twitter and am now moving over to Facebook. I polled people on both my accounts and (not surprisingly) the Twitter people said Twitter and the Facebook people said Facebook! The actual order of my social media presence looks like this: 1) LinkedIn (with little success) 2) Twitter 3) YouTube 4) Facebook
Re: Twitter vs Facebook - I use Facebook pages for Business and rarely ever use Twitter. I hace lost count of the no. of Hotels that I have visited, regarding their marketing campaigns, that may have 5k Facebook Fans and only 100 followers on Twitter. It is a lot more difficult to engage with people on Twitter and thus harder to gain traction. If you are a business like Nike, then Twitter is great, but if you are an SME, then focus on Facebook or LinkedIn (if you are providing a professional service.) You can always have your Facebook feed directly in to Twitter, so you can have a presence on both, but do the work on one. Also check out ping.fm for managing campaigns - it is a free tool, and a great time saver.


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