Brand Camp University – Personal Branding 2.0

Lego Ollie the Twitterrific bird, originally uploaded by Fredoichi.

There are many things you can do on Twitter to build your personal brand; however, when it really comes down to it, it’s all in what you tweet. Your content and activity represents you and what you have to offer others, whether they be potential followers or even prospective partners or employers.

Here are some great tips on how to enhance your personal brand with each and every tweet:

Be selective. Decide what type of content you want to promote and stick to it. Don’t tweet or retweet anything and everything. – Jennifer Turner, @Talagy

Be consistent. Use a similar format, or 2-3 formats, depending on the content, for each tweet. Become a brand people will recognize. For example, start each tweet with one word in CAPS, or always end with #jobsearch, or use personalized web address shortening services. – Jessica Silverstein, @AttysCounsel

Act selflessly. Give away useful, industry-specific tips 85 percent of the time; limit promotional tweets to 15 percent of your content. Invest your energy in connecting with your followers. – Laura Christianson, @BloggingBistro

Showcase your expertise. The best way to showcase your personal brand on Twitter is to publish “thought leadership tweets”. “Thought leadership tweets”, are personal quote tweets that demonstrate your knowledge or opinions on topics, key trends and events related to your industry or profession. – Marci Reynolds, @marcireynolds12

Be responsive. Use the @ symbol followed by the person’s Twitter name to directly address questions and /or comments to people and also respond to questions. Conversing with people via the public Twitter stream will raise your visibility and thus increase your online presence. – T.C. Coleman, @UpwardAction

Give credit where its due. Reply and RT to those in the industry or who provide relevant and insightful knowledge, what goes around will come around. Its too transparent to be fake on Twitter. – Charlie Riley, @charlieriley

Tweet with the reader in mind. Another tip I use is to seek out Twitter users who tweet with search terms similar to my blog’s audience. That way, I’m addressing folks who are most likely to find my tweets of interest. – James Dillehay, @craftmarketer

Automate value. We don’t all have time to be on Twitter 24/7. Save yourself a little sanity and use tools like SocialOomph to schedule your tweets in advance so you can share valuable and relevant content even when you aren’t on Twitter. In addition, you can use tools like Twitterfeed to automatically post new articles and updates from your blog, as well as from blogs and sites of other trusted thought leaders in your industry. – Chris Perry, @CareerRocketeer.

Special thanks to everyone who contributed to this wealth of personal branding insight!

Chris Perry, MBA is a Gen Y brand and marketing “generator,” a career search and personal branding expert and the founder of Career Rocketeer and Launchpad.