blog.rebeccamurphey.com Adventures in front-end consulting

Twitter for personal branding: Getting started

By Rebecca | February 18, 2009

categories: howto

This post is focused on using Twitter for "personal branding" -- establishing yourself as an influential voice on a topic in which you have some expertise. I want to say up front that I don't deign to suggest that I'm adding anything new to the sea of "getting started on Twitter" content that's out there. However, I just got home from drinks with a friend, and when we parted she seemed intrigued by the idea of using Twitter to more firmly establish herself as an expert in her field, a task for which I think Twitter is particularly well suited. I was going to write her an email, but instead I thought I would write down some notes for her and anyone else who happens to be reading.

If you've read any posts on this topic already, there's probably not much new to read here; if you haven't, I suggest you read this and then keep reading -- there are a whole lot of opinions on how best to use Twitter for all sorts of purposes, and these are just mine.

That said, here's my abbreviated list of steps for getting started on Twitter if personal branding is your goal. Below this list, I've also noted a few Twitter vocabulary terms you'll probably want to know.

Getting Started

• Step 1: Sign up for a Twitter account at twitter.com. Since the focus is on personal branding, choose a username that has some association with your actual name. Pay a quick visit to the Settings page, and pay special attention to the Notices tab; you'll probably want to receive e-mails about direct messages from other Twitter users, and also e-mails when people follow you. On the Account tab, make sure the "Protect my updates" checkbox is NOT checked -- otherwise, you're defeating the purpose.
• Step 2: Download a desktop Twitter application. I run TweetDeck on my desktop, and TwitterFox in Firefox. TweetDeck is great because it allows you to have several panels that you can view at once. I have one for viewing messages for people I'm following, one for capturing tweets related to a search term, one for public replies to my tweets, and one for direct messages from people I'm following. TweetDeck and other applications are also great because they have built-in tools for filtering tweets, replying to tweets, following users, shortening URLs, etc. -- once you start using TweetDeck or something similar, you'll rarely need to return to the Twitter site.
• Step 3: Start tweeting. If you read something interesting related to your area of expertise, write about it. If you do something interesting for work, write about it. If you're traveling, write about it. If you have a question about your field, ask it. Strive to be professional but human. Remember that you only have 140 characters, so choose your words carefully, and strive to include keywords. Remember to shorten URLs so long ones don't eat up precious characters.
• Step 4: Follow people. After you've been posting ("tweeting") for a few days and you're ready for people to start paying attention, go to search.twitter.com or use TweetDeck to search for keywords related to your area of expertise. Read what's being said, and click on the usernames of the person saying it. If that user's posts ("tweets") are generally interesting to you, click the button on their page to follow them, and you'll start to see their tweets on your Twitter homepage. It's customary (but not required) that users follow people who follow them, so if you choose the people you follow with care, chances are they will follow you back.
• Step 5: Keep participating. Take a little time each day to scan the tweets from people you're following and from search terms you're watching. Reply to people, retweet interesting things other people are saying, and post your own new content. Over time you'll discover the interesting people, and start to accumulate your own followers. Remember that people will decide whether to pay attention to you based on how much you're contributing -- that doesn't mean you need to tweet 20 times a day, but once or twice a day is a reasonable pace.

Twitter Vocabulary

Some of the words surrounding Twitter can make it sound a bit foreign, or at least geeky and slightly uncool. Here's what they mean so you won't be so intimidated:

• Tweet: Messages posted by Twitter users, or, as a verb, the act of posting a message on Twitter.
• Follow: This is like "friending" someone on Facebook; when you follow someone, you are saying that you want to read what they say. Their tweets will appear on your Twitter homepage, as well as in TweetDeck and other Twitter applications.
• Reply: Replies are like notes to people posted on a public bulletin board: there's no strict guarantee they'll read it, and anyone else is welcome to read it. You can reply to any user, and sending topical replies to people can be a great way to get them to follow you. To reply to someone, put an @ symbol before their username. For example: @rmurphey great tweet!
• Direct Message: Direct messages are like e-mail, and in most cases they'll arrive in the user's actual email inbox. Unlike replies, they are not public; only the user receives them. To send a direct message to someone, put a d followed by a space before their username. For example: d rmurphey this is a secret message.
• Retweet: If you like someone's tweet, you can retweet it. There's no official syntax for this, but the customary way to do it is to put RT before their message (and then to truncate their original message as necessary). For example: RT @rmurphey just wrote a great blog post.

Good luck! Don't forget to follow me @rmurphey.

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