Building Your Personal Brand Through Twitter

By Mari Behovitz

You know that personal brand all of your professors have been telling you about? Well, you need one. Having a personal brand unique to you is a great way for you to stand out both in person and online. Your social media presence should align with your overall personal brand so that no matter where employers are searching for you, they are seeing a unique yet inclusive representation of you across all of your platforms.

In the Advertising and Public Relations field, professionals are expected to utilize the wide variety of social media that is available for everyday use. They help enhance one’s personal brand and connect with other professionals as well as the general public. Twitter is one of the biggest platforms that an advertising professional should take advantage of.

Here are 5 tips on how to get you started on building your own Twitter brand:

1. Follow professionals in the industry

This is by far one of the most beneficial reasons to have a twitter. No matter what direction you plan to take within the advertising field, there is already a professional out there doing your dream job. So follow them, read their content, and make them one of your connections. Whether that person lives 10 miles away or across the world, you never know what you may learn from them.

A good place to start is by following all the speakers who are gracious enough to come speak with us at one of our advertising club meetings. Many times they provide us not only with contact information, but with their twitter name as well.

2. Choose the right photo

Twitter is pretty casual compared to other sites, so you don’t necessarily need the same professional headshot that you use for your LinkedIn profile. However, your photo shouldn’t be completely unprofessional that you would feel uncomfortable with having future employers view. It should be one that represents your own personal brand and portrays you in a positive light.

3. Use spell check

Your tweets are a small reflection of your writing ability. Make sure you are checking for spelling and grammatical errors before you post anything.

Grammarly is a great program that you can install to help catch some of those mistakes. However, remember that you are smarter than a computer and sometimes how it thinks you should change it isn’t always the best option. So double check the changes it would like you to make before you make them. Grammarly also works on emails, WordPress and more.

4. Beef up your bio

You know all of those extra curricular you are in, like Advertising Club? Well, this is the perfect place to put them! Be sure to include all the clubs you’re in, the internship(s) you are currently doing, and anything else you want to share about yourself that you might want a professional to know.

5. Post relevant content

Sometimes it can be difficult to know what to tweet about. Here’s a good place to start. As an advertising and public relations student, there are always all kinds of events going on that you can tweet about. For instance, you could tweet about club meetings, agency tours, special guest speakers, or mixers. You could tweet great quotes from one of the speakers you liked, something that you learned, or just telling your followers that you were there. This is a great way to engage with other students and professionals in the industry.

There you have it, 5 tips on how you can get started building your personal brand on Twitter. So, what are you waiting for? Login into your Twitter and start developing your personal brand.