This is from a series of posts about using internet tools to promote yourself.

If you like this post, please see my post on Promoting yourself with Linkedin and Promoting yourself with a blog.

I’ve written plenty about getting started with Twitter, so I won’t get into that. If you need more background, check out my posts with Twitter tags or my posts that fall into the Twitter category.

It might be most difficult to explain how to use Twitter (above all other online tools) to promote yourself, so this isn’t a linear post as much as it is a list of things you need to keep in mind.

First things first, what’s on your Twitter profile? Do you have a bio with relevant keywords? No? Check out my Twitter profile for an example.

Second, do you have a picture or humanlike avatar? Get one. If I’ve never met you, I need something visual to attach to your name.

Third, what’s on your Twitter background? Use that space for contact information. Some people do this well. Others, don’t even try. If I look at your profile and see that you spent a few minutes in Photoshop, Paint.net, etc to create a background, I know that you might be serious about connecting with other tweeple.

Now, your Twitter profile is set up. Whom are you following and who is following you? Some people will say, “It’s not who’s following you. It’s whom you’re following.” That generalization is crap.

Your followers can tweet you responses to questions and connect you with people you need to talk to you, just as you can do the same for tweeple you follow. And, the tweeple your follow and are followed by will not always be the same.

So, how do you use Twitter to promote yourself? Interact with your followers.

Go to Tweetstats or Twitter-Friends to see how much you interact. You need to be asking and answering questions. Retweeting also helps, but only if what you’re retweeting is really worth passing on.

If you have a blog, consider setting up Twitterfeed. Some people don’t like auto-tweets though, so think about your audience.

Setting up a good network on Twitter takes a long time and quite a bit of dedication. It’s not a network you can check in with every few days. If you want to use it, you need to be present.

If it helps though, I’ll tell you this… When you can tweet something like, “I need a contact in such-and-such company. Can anyone help?” and you get at least one response that might lead somewhere, you’ve connected and are already using Twitter to promote yourself. Congratulations. Don’t rest though. Keep working at it.

Twitter is so new and best practices are not agreed upon, so if any of you readers have suggestions, I know I, and the community, would love if you shared.

Tags: promoting on twitter, promoting yourself on twitter, retweeting, self-promotion on twitter, tweetstats, Twitter, twitter backgrounds, twitter bios, twitter-friends, twitterfeed

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Lessons, Twitter, social media, social networking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.