BernieBorges.com Blog: Social Media and Web Marketing

Two Ways to Use Twitter for Career Development

Once each quarter I travel to a U.S. city to deliver a two-day workshop to corporate marketers through the AMA on Facebook and Twitter Marketing. By now, most businesses have at least some insight into how Facebook can be used for marketing. But, Twitter remains a mystery to many businesses.

Twitter is also a mystery for many professionals who seek ways to develop their career opportunities. Twitter is very unique starting with its 140 character per tweet limitation. Once you understand how Twitter can fit strategically into your career development plans, light bulbs start going on. Twitter is a communication channel. It is real-time. It can help build your personal brand. Everyone should approach Twitter as an opportunity to engage and build online relationships, while building personal brand.

The two most compelling aspects of Twitter that you need to embrace are:

1)   Be interesting
2)   Be human

The be interesting part is all about sharing content that will interest your followers. The be human part is all about engaging with others in plain English.

Two Ways to Use Twitter for Career Development

• Use Twitter as a Research Tool
• Follow and Engage Relevant People

Twitter for Research

Twitter has a search engine: www.search.twitter.com. You can search any topic and Twitter will display the results based on people’s use of your search query in their tweets. This can uncover some interesting opportunities. For example, say you’re in “healthcare systems management,” you could set up a search query for this and follow the tweets for it. But, you don’t need to monitor it all day long. Just set up an RSS feed of your search query and feed it into your RSS feed dashboard. This method will keep you informed of what’s going on in Twitter around this search query.

Follow and Engage Relevant People

For example, if you’re in healthcare and you’re exploring new career opportunities, use Twitter follow tools such as Twellow and WeFollow. Search for people using phrases like “healthcare systems management” (or similar phrases) and follow people who appear to be relevant based on that search query. As you follow these people, you may learn of articles and other interesting and relevant content including job postings that can lead to new career opportunities.

I also encourage business development professionals, consultants and small business owners should be active on Twitter to follow breaking news, interesting people, and competitive insights as well as for relationship building.

Keep in mind that LinkedIn has established an alliance with Twitter. So, when you post status updates in LinkedIn, they can also appear on your Twitter feed. Likewise, tweets of those people in your LinkedIn network are displayed in your news stream on your LinkedIn home page.

If you are new to Twitter, I encourage you to give it some time. If you follow these two suggestions over at least a one month period of time, you’ll gain understanding of how Twitter can be a valuable career development social media communication and networking channel.

I’ve re-purposed my all-day live Twitter workshop into a three-part myBrainshark presentation. Part one is below. Learn how to Gain Competitive Edge Using Twitter. It may be the best $1 you spend all day.

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