Branding, willy-nilly is an essential part of today’s world. Companies, artists, sportsmen, celebrities, politicians – everyone is on twitter, and they are all managing their brands and identities one way or another.
The question is if we – you and I also need to brand ourselves on Social Media. The bad (or good?) news is whether you like it or not, the way we manage our social media presence has an impact on how we are perceived and what we stand for. That, as far as I am concerned is a brand.
Consistent activity on social media builds a promise for your followers. It tells them the kind of content, information or news they should expect from you. The irony is that your brand is born the moment you create a twitter account. How you develop your brand from there on is entirely up to you.
So then how can we build a good brand for ourselves? It is relatively simple: by being conscious of what we post and why we post it. Here are a few things you can try when creating your own unique brand on Twitter.
Be yourself
Twitter is addictive. Regular tweeters would know what I am saying. According to a report, tweeting stimulates the same feelings in us as food, sex and sleep.
Tweeting can be intimidating and overwhelming at the same time – especially when you have a larger circle of followers.
You begin to expect interactive behaviour from your circle and want them to favorite, comment or retweet whatever you do. This can be tricky and can make you want to post stuff that people would like to follow.
You could end up becoming more of a source of entertainment. If that is what you are aiming at – a fun way to say things and make people follow you then a quick wit may take you a long way. But if that is not what you want then be careful, because every tweet you send out contributes to the pool of information your followers attribute towards you. At the same time, don’t be afraid to voice your opinions. Authenticity adds value to every online experience.
Be yourself. Connect with people whom you can learn from each day. Make YOU your brand. Create that unique presence through careful tweeting where others want to read and retweet you.
Plan it
Come up with a tweeting plan.
When to tweet, what to tweet about, whom to tag and what to say must all be part of your tweeting plan.
As an individual, this may not be an elaborate plan, but more of a set of tweets that exhibits the quality of content that you want to be known for.
There are two things you need to keep in mind as you prepare your plan for Twitter. First is the time of the day when you will be tweeting your information and second is what you will be hashtagging that information with.
Twitter is all about reaching the right audience in the right words at the right time. Of course, keep your tweet well within the character limit. Tweets have a short life and in this case less is definitely more.
Take it slow
Like I said, tweeting can be overwhelming. Be sure not to tweet about too many things. The trick is to know your interests and what you want to talk about. Then look for the right hashtags. Tag a set of 2-5 pre-defined hashtags to each ‘kind’ of post that you want to tweet. Always use similar hashtags for tweets about specific topics.
I am sharing a few hashtags that I use with the kinds of posts that I do from @sohaib_mustafa. When I am tweeting, I simply choose one of these according to the topic. This ensures that I am always reaching out to my target audience and appearing in the same kinds of feeds over twitter.
Marketing/Advertising
#Communication #Marketing #Advertising
#SocialMedia #PR #Marketing #Communication
HR or Internal Communication
#InternalComms #HR #Communication #Business #Job #Hiring
Entrepreneurship
#Business #Entrepreneur #Startup #SmallBizz #Success
Motivation/Inspiration
#Motivation #Success #Inspiration #PositiveMind
Technology
#Tech #Andriod #iphone #Mobile #Samsung
Social Media
#Blog #SocialMedia #Marketing #Success #Twitter
Don’t pay!
It is a bad idea to buy followers for Twitter. Unfortunately, several will want to take this route.
Watch out! This is a trap. Bought followers are generally not real people. Which is why it is important to find authentic, credible followers and build that following over time. A few genuine followers are far better than thousands of followers that don’t exist.
By all measures, it is only fair to have followers who are real who know why they are following you and who can interact with you. Imagine having 10,000 followers and not getting even a few favorites or RTS every time you tweet. So go for the long run and build your twitter followership slowly and through consistent tweeting. Quality will always win over quantity.
#Hashtag with a pinch of salt
Tweets with excessive hashtags appear to be desperate attempts to be noticed. Most tweeters don’t even read posts with too many hashtags. Find the relevant hashtags by using relevant services online and use them cleverly. Try tweeting with words that can be used as hashtags so they are well spread out and you are not just adding a bunch in the end – this is useful to leverage the character limit efficiently.
One Tweet at a time
It is good content and the timeliness of your tweets that gets you more followers – not the number of tweets. You frequency will depend on your need to tweet.
Journalists may tweet every hour or so but for a regular user like you and me, 4-6 tweets are enough for a day. The choice is yours. Try out a few frequencies and then settle with the most suitable one, one that you can easily sustain and that offers value to your followers.
Proofread
Before you post, please proofread. This is a must have for twitter peeps. Often when we have social media activations for businesses, we emphasize on this aspect as one of the most important ones. One typo can affect the credibility of your information. So scrutinize information. And proofread like there is no tomorrow.
These were a few things I have learnt from my tweeting experience and my more Twitter savvy friends. What are your learning experiences with twitter?
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- How to brand yourself on Twitter - June 29, 2015
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