The list of social networks that can be used in your professional development is not restricted to LinkedIn alone. Twitter, too, has very strong potential in this regard. Twitter is a website where users can send messages no more than 140 characters in length, so-called ‘tweets’, which are then displayed on the profiles of users and their followers. The following 25 tips on using Twitter for your professional development have been suggested by edudemic.com.
- Make the most of the space available to you in your profile to provide professional information about yourself. You should also choose a professional-sounding username.
- Use a professional photograph and allow others to connect with you.
- Create and forward relevant information that could be useful to your followers.
- Follow a number of people and gain more followers. However, you should only choose users whose opinions you are genuinely interested in.
- Take part in chats, of which there are currently around 700 on Twitter.
- Make your tweets publicly available so that other people can find them and find out about you.
- Build your own, personal Twitter brand through the regular sharing of messages from your field.
- Follow users who share a lot of information from your field.
- Prior to an important meeting or conference, contact the participants via Twitter so that it’s easier to break the ice.
- Now and again share some personal observations so that you come across as being more authentic.
- Follow the leaders in your field.
- Communicate politely and diplomatically so that your online image remains professional.
- Tweet regularly.
- Examine your options for using Twitter to find new or more interesting employment.
- Connect with new people, as well as old acquaintances who start using Twitter.
- Present yourself as a specialist in your field.
- Pose questions to encourage others to share their opinions.
- While you needn’t follow all your followers, at least read through their profiles.
- Use hashtags (words or phrases marked with the hash symbol #) to mark topics that you are talking about.
- Use Twitter to communicate with colleagues who you don’t often see personally.
- Become the leader of your community. Actively build your own network, invite other users and support communication between the members of your community.
- Use an RSS channel to follow specific information that interests you, so that nothing escapes your attention.
- Offer help to others whenever you can. Answer questions, share questions and so on. You will learn a lot yourself in the process.
- Only use your strong standing on Twitter when you need it, for example to say that you are looking for a new job or to ask about questions that you cannot answer yourself.
- Once you start, build your Twitter brand on a long-term basis. Be consistent in your behaviour. Use applications, for example TweetDeck, to manage your activities on Twitter.
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