Though networking is typically thought of as face-to-face contact with another person, social media has become another tool to engage with others in your personal & business life. Facebook and LinkedIn are great to connect with people you have met or wanting to meet, as long as they accept your request back. With Twitter, you just follow.
Many people are confused with Twitter and do not fully understand it’s capabilities. Twitter is flexible. You can follow someone and not ever speak to them, but could learn plenty, or vise versa. It’s about the abundance of information of the people you choose to follow that is beneficial. Twitter forces you to learn to best describe your thoughts in under 140 characters, which can be a brainteaser from time-to-time. When an incident, natural disaster, or local occurrence happens, Twitter is the best place to find real-time information quickly. I recently used this feature to track why I at a complete stop on the I-65, a car flipped in my lane. It’s a place where anyone can make a difference and impact others with your same interests. The best part about Twitter is that it takes less than 5 minutes to set up your account!
To better understand Twitter, I want to help you eliminate the mistakes I have made.
- Do not create a profile that is unappealing. Use a company picture or a portrait photograph of yourself that best represents you. Also, fill out your bio with a catchy phase or quote about you or your business.
- Twitter is not all about promotions & branding yourself, but another having a conversation and engaging with your followers. Bring your personality or your brand’s personality to life.
- Do not get upset when users unfollow you! This happens all the time. Focus on your content and the rest will follow.
- Make sure to interact with the ones you follows and your followers. Retweets, mentions, & clicking “favorite” are ways to socialize on Twitter. People want to follow users that attract others.
- Do not over tweet! I will unfollow anyone who is blowing up my Twitter feed, especially if I’m missing other tweets of information that could be useful to me. I recommend 10-12 tweets per day.
I hope these simple tips can help you start using Twitter as a powerful networking tool!
Wonderful information, Cassie! Thank you.
Great article !! and now a days people are forgetting that networking is not only limited to the LinkedIn, Facebook, and email because you only get half of the benefits from it, still face to face networking is good option and you should do it often and once again thank you for your valuable guidance. Going to save it for further reference.