Are you currently in a successful career? Are you in career transition? Or perhaps you are a business owner? A student? Regardless of your position or the industry you work in, an online presence is an essential component to managing a successful career or business.
There are many social media sites available to establish and maintain a visible profile. The top three sites are currently Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook. Twitter is the most recent and requires the least amount of time to complete a profile and is very user friendly.
Here are a few tips to get started on 
:
- Choose your Name and Username carefully giving consideration to how others will search for you. If you are creating a personal profile, use your proper name if available, especially for the Username as this will become your link/url. Consistency is important so if you have profiles on Linkedin, Facebook, Naymz, etc. be sure to use the same name rather than establishing one using your first initial and one with your middle initial and one with your full name without an initial. Upon typing your name you will immediately see whether the name you choose is “not available” or “ok √”.
- A valid email address is required to set up your profile for verification. This email address can only be used for one Twitter profile and of course you will need to enter a password. You will also have the option to sign in with either your email address or your username.
- Your profile can be maintained by selecting Settings with an option to enter your location, web address and a short bio. Consider your location for relevancy. For a personal profile I would recommend your city of residence but if you are creating a business profile that provides services worldwide, you may want to consider, “global” or “international”. If you do not have a personal or business website, you may still have an available web address for those to find out a little more about you such as a Facebook page or Linkedin profile. Be sure to customize those url’s to clearly reflect your given name or business name.
- Profile content is limited on Twitter allowing only 160 characters to write your bio so make it count. Your bio and location provide search criteria and the only key to who you are other than a web address and eventually a history of tweets.
- Who do you want to follow? Who do you want to follow you? Your career, personal interests and possibly location will be key to your searches. Remember, this is a valuable venue for sharing information and establishing connections despite those not familiar with Twitter who may believe it to be a useless personal tool using 140 characters to let people know when you have stopped to get a cup of coffee. You have the choice to see what others are saying before you choose to follow them and the number or characters provided are more than sufficient to share links to articles, blogs and news. Hash tags # are also used to share information for specific topics or events for real time interaction. Speakers can refer to tweets and answer questions in real time. The ease of communication and sharing of information on Twitter in real time is the reason that Twitter has reached over 100 million users adding approximately 300,000 users each day!
- Be sure to customize your Twitter page with your choice of background images and colours and keep track of who you’re following by creating lists.
For further information on managing your professional online profile contact Elite Resumes.
Leave a Reply