For the third year in a row, Bustle's Upstart Awards are honoring young women who are doing incredible things in the realms of business, STEM, fashion and beauty, the arts, philanthropy, and beyond. Want to be an Upstarts honoree one day? Read on for career tips, insights, and inspiration to help get you there.
You might think of Twitter as a place to rant about politics or the latest celebrity scandal. But it can also be a great professional platform. And the good news is, building your personal brand on Twitter can be a lot of fun — because you still get to rant about politics and celebrity gossip in the process.
“The internet is so pervasive that you are your brand on every platform you’re a part of, so it’s important to maintain your brand management in the most effective way for your career,” Jennifer Lee Magas, MA, JD, VP of Magas Media Consultants, LLC and a clinical associate professor of public relations at Pace University, tells Bustle. “Your Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest are parts of your digital presence that will be factored into evaluations of you as a whole.”
Building a brand is the interesting part, but a lot of Twitter use is also very tactical. To get more followers, you'll need to follow people, use hashtags so people can find you, and try to tweet regularly. You can also up your chances of finding job opportunities through Twitter by creating Twitter lists of the people you want to work with and following accounts that post jobs.
But the success of your interactions will depend on how you come off on the platform. So, here are a few ways to build your absolute best personal brand on Twitter.
People looking for users like you will have an easier time finding you if you use keywords and hashtags that describe your personal brand in your bio, Gisele Bisson, a personal branding and internet marketing consultant at Visibility Shift Communications, tells Bustle.
Your brand isn’t just what you project publicly to the whole world. You also project it in each individual interaction. That’s why it’s important to engage with other accounts on Twitter, Andrea Serie, marketing consultant and communications strategist for DoubleDown.Digital, tells Bustle. “Ask questions that reflect you are an out-of-the-box thinker who pays attention to what is happening with their accounts,” she says. “Over time, the social media teams will start to recognize your account.”
Your personal brand isn’t just for the internet, and it’ll look more legitimate if you show you’re involved in your field IRL, too. Magas recommends tweeting about events and conferences related to your job.
One way to brand yourself is to become a trustworthy source of information about a particular field or industry, says Magas. Share articles on the topics you want to be associated with, and people will come to view you as an expert on them.
You want to share things that promote yourself, but you also want to give your audience what they want to read, says Serie. Look through your followers, think about what their interests are, and tweet things that’ll interest them. You can also look at your past tweets and see which ones got the most engagements to figure out what your audience wants.
The easiest way to get followers is to follow people, Kari DePhillips, owner of The Content Factory, tells Bustle. The app Crowdfire lets you follow people who follow accounts like yours, so you can build the kind of following that fits your brand. BuzzSumo, which tells you who the biggest influencers on certain topics are, is also extremely helpful to find people to follow.
Once you connect with a lot of people on Twitter, keeping track of everyone can get overwhelming. To keep your timeline under control, DePhillips suggests creating lists of different kinds of people you want to build relationships with.
Throughout this process, have fun — because the best brands are the ones with personality.
