Twitter as a boost to your Personal Brand

This August 2022 I dedicate it to talk about four social networks that act as promoters of your Personal Brand: Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram and TikTok. I know, there are more social networks, but August 2022 only has four weekends, so I've chosen the four that I think can be more efficient as a boost to your personal brand.

And today we start with the one that, For me, more resembles a social network, Open, without excessive limitations, wild, Ruthless, but a great place to follow the news, meet trends and meet inspiring people.

Here's a one-minute video summary:

You can also listen to it on the podcast Todo Deja Marca, episode 84, In iVoox, Spotify Or Apple Podcast.

What is Twitter and what is it for??

Twitter is a service of Microblogging online to distribute short messages to target groups via a personal computer, tablet or mobile phone.

Twitter incorporates aspects of social media with instant messaging technologies to create networks of users who can communicate throughout the day with short messages, Or “Tweets”. Source: Britannica.com.

How does Twitter work??

A user writes a tweet using the keyboard and sends it to the Twitter server, that transmits it to a list of other users (called followers) who have registered to receive that user's tweet.

In addition, users can choose to follow a specific topic by clicking on a hashtag (As #butimportasnoimportas), which creates a conversation and increases the number of followers of a specific Twitter channel to millions.

Tweets can be anything, from jokes to news and dinner plans, but they cannot exceed 280 Characters (initially 140).

Launch of Twitter

Also according to Britannica.com, Twitter grew out of podcasting company Odeo, founded in 2004 by Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass. (Williams and Stone had previously worked at Google., and Williams had created the popular web creation tool Blogger). 

Apple announced in 2005 that would add podcasts to its iTunes digital media app, and Odeo's leaders felt that the company could not compete with Apple and that a new direction was needed.

Odeo employees were asked if they had any interesting side projects, and the engineer Jack Dorsey proposed a short message service (SMS) in which you could share small blog-like updates with friends.

Glass proposed the name Twttr. Dorsey sent the first tweet (“just setting up my twttr”) The 21 March 2006, and the full version of Twitter debuted in July 2006.

just setting up my twttr

— jack (@jack) March 21, 2006

Seeing the future of the product, in October 2006 Williams, Stone and Dorsey bought Odeo and created Obvious Corp.. to further develop it. Interest in the platform increased considerably after its presentation at the South by Southwest music and technology conference, held in Austin (Texas) in March 2007.

The following month Twitter was created, Inc. as a corporate entity, thanks to a venture capital contribution, and Dorsey became the first executive director (Ceo) from Twitter. In 2008, Williams fired Dorsey as CEO and, two years later, was replaced by CoO Dick Costolo.

Twitter as a business model

From the beginning, Twitter was primarily a free SMS with social media elements. As such, it lacked the revenue streams that can be found in places that earn revenue through advertisements or membership fees.

With an increase in 1300% in the number of unique visitors in 2009, it became clear that Twitter was more than a curiosity. However, in a year when social media giant Facebook made a profit for the first time, it was unclear whether Twitter could achieve financial independence for investors.

In April 2010, Twitter launched “Promoted Tweets” (ads that appear in search results) as your main source of income.

That same year, Twitter also announced the "Promoted Trends", that placed the promoted content among other trends, and Promoted Accounts, that placed promoted accounts in the list of suggested accounts that users could follow.

From news to source of information

The roots of the social network Twitter became clear in April 2009, when the actor Ashton Kutcher he won a contest against CNN to become the first Twitter user to have more than a million followers.

While celebrity tracking remained the main draw of the service, businesses soon started tweeting about promotions and events, and political campaigns discovered the value of Twitter as a communication tool.

In the U.S. presidential election of 2008, Barack Obama dominated his opponent, John McCain, in the field of social networks, accumulating almost four times more friends on Myspace and more than 20 times more followers on Twitter. This fact practically guaranteed that future candidates included a presence on social networks as part of their media strategies..

The landing of the US Airways flight on the Hudson River

However, the most notable step in Twitter's evolution was its increasing use as a tool for journalists.. Twitter became a source of breaking news that transcended political boundaries.

The 15 January 2009, a tweet from ferry passenger Janis Krums broke the news of the flight's successful landing 1549 of US Airways on New York's Hudson River. A hurriedly taken image with a mobile phone of passengers disembarking from the half-submerged plane climbed into Twitpic.com, a photo hosting service for Twitter users; the site quickly collapsed when thousands of Twitter users tried to see it at once. It was the first image the world saw..

Before you create an account on Twitter check this

Before we start I will tell you that, after what has been seen in years, Twitter isn't for everyone. Where this network finds greater affinity is in these audiences:

• Journalists and media
• Educational community
• Medical-health community
• Digital Marketing Community
• Literary community, arts, cinema...
• Personal Branding Community
• World of sports

And it also has a special affinity in two types of activities: 

• Events, where you can turn an event into a trend
• Customer Support (Companies), where it shows a lot of effectiveness in some brands that take it seriously

I think it's important to clarify that., since we do not have to have a presence in all networks but in the one with greater affinity with the audiences set in our strategic model.

7 keys why Twitter is a great driver of your personal brand

1. Notoriety. It is a showcase to the world of your personal brand. A tweet, a well-worked twitter thread supported by powerful insight, it can reach many people and make you known.
2. Source of information, not just because the media and journalists are there, but because it shares the here and now. It's immediacy, what's going on.
3. Expert positioning. Persistent use of insights, value propositions, Reflections, Video, Images, gifs, hashtags about your specialty accelerate your placement in a brand territory.
4. Allows you to repeat a publication, given the dynamic nature of the network. In case of events it is effective, and allows you to test days and time slots. There is no other network that supports this flexibility.
5. Allows you to create selective lists, private or public, by thematic areas, a unique ranking on social networks.
6. It's "link friendly", like external links (For now). That doesn't happen on Linkedin, Instagram or TikTok.
7. Helps synthesize ideas. The 280 characters are an incentive to summarize in a few words a concept of value or an interesting news. Although it is true that can create threads.

I was asked where is the future of personal branding going? 5 Years?
Dream of a Subject of Personal Branding in schools and universities, where the focus is on self-knowledge, in personal strategy, in visibility

I open thread 👇🏻

— Guillem Recolons #PersonalBranding (@GuillemRecolons) May 28, 2022

Twitter thread example

Some ideas to have a good profile on Twitter

• Keep an eye on the first impression: 
  • Use your Name and define well what you do with a hashtag
  • Use a photo yours recent and well lit
  • Remember the photo of Cover, talks a lot about you
  • Link to relevant pages about you (Blog, Web, about.me, Linkedin, Etc.)
  • A fort biography from Twitter (uses metaphors, humour, Insights). Don't be one more

• Don't be on Twitter, be an active person, Talks, Communicates, Interact, Thanks, retweet, send direct messages, Congratulates. Spend a few minutes a day generating "engagement".
• Follow leaders and people of reference. It's not just what you know, is who you know. To do this, it will be useful to create twitter lists to see those profiles preferentially
• Create value in your tweets with its own content (if you are a creator) and alien (curator)
• Show your human side, we are not robots. Posting personal reflections or images of something that has caught your attention is positive (unused). Share successes and -why not- Failures. In the latter case, you can create surveys to understand what went wrong.
• Follow hashtags to keep you up to date with your business environment
• Take advantage of the format image and video. Few do it, it will help you differentiate yourself.
• And if you have a blog (what you expect, if you don't), Twitter is especially interesting to publicize your posts.
• Use audio rooms Twitter Spaces, are a good place to manage events
• Be you, don't create a digital alter ego, tries to be the same as off-grid, that's not just called authenticity, it is also consistency.

To know more about Twitter

• Ylse Roa tells us how to manage communities on Twitter
• Twitter in a week, by Francesc Grau, a quick manual to manage this network
• The Twitter Book, by Alfredo Vela, a complete and illustrated manual with good examples
• Twitter for dummies, by Javier Guembe
• Good practices for political leaders on Twitter, by Miguel Moya

Stock Photos from Ink Drop / Shutterstock