In our new Insights note we will address personal branding on Twitter for executives and company founders who may (or may not) have a presence on Twitter and who continue to struggle to gain traction.

Twitter can be a powerful tool to bolster your personal brand and establish you as an industry thought leader. Although it has nowhere near as many users as Facebook or Instagram, Twitter is the best social network for sharing ideas and news with a large group of people, as opposed to interacting with friends and family. As a result, it offers the greatest opportunity to connect with influencers, customers, bloggers and journalists.

Unless you’re already famous, however, attracting a major following on Twitter isn’t easy. Getting people to follow you and pay attention to your content isn’t just about tweeting interesting stuff, although that is certainly important as well. It’s also a matter of understanding how to get other people’s attention by interacting with them and sharing their content.

In what follows we share an excerpt from our first-ever Insights note to help you better understand how to make the right choices about using Twitter for your own personal brand.

What should you be tweeting about?

If you’re using Twitter to develop thought leadership, you should consistently post about topics that are important to your brand. That said, by no means should you shy away from posting content relating to other interests or events, particularly those going on in your own life.

While your central offering to the Twittersphere is your expertise, people prefer experts they can relate to, so a photo of yourself on a rollercoaster or your thoughts on current events to show your personal side is a very effective way of boosting your brand. Your content should convey a coherent identity and personality that is aligned with a certain set of values that are themselves consistent with, and authentic to, both you and your corporate brand. You can communicate those values –– whether that is a belief in gender equality or a commitment to innovation –– through both your work-related and personal tweets.

What should your content look like?

There are three distinct categories of Twitter content (see illustration below), and an effective content campaign will feature a mix of all three. However, you should always strive to put a personal touch on as many of your tweets as possible. Retweeting another person’s content will often be noticed, appreciated and even sometimes reciprocated by the content creator. For the most part, however, that serves their brand, not your own.

C-suite Twitter Training Module

For a more in-depth understanding of how to effectively market yourself on Twitter, Manzer Communications offers a C-suite Twitter Training Module, a two hour (in-person or remote) training session aimed at teaching you how to have an impact with your tweets.

Manzer Communications can also help you set up and manage your Twitter account, which includes growing your list of followers, planning and executing a content-rich stream of tweets and expanding your influence on Twitter. Contact us to learn more!