How Optimizing Twitter Profile Can Help You Land A Job

Twitter Bird          Twitter is not just a platform to tweet about everything under the sun. If used effectively, it can become an important weapon in your arsenal, for job search. Here are a few points on how you can use Twitter effectively.

Have An Effective Bio
Twitter allows you just 160 characters to write a bio so utilize it well. Make it clear about your field of interests and your skills and maybe even add up a bit of your personal interests if space allows.

Use A Real Photo
90% of people see the profile pic first when they visit the profile of a person. So make sure you have a good and neat photo of yours uploaded. No Tom Cruise or Megan Fox there. Or even a laughing hyena or praying mantis! As much as fun it would be uploading such photos, it doesn’t look very professional in the eyes of your potential employers.

Follow Relevant People
It’ll be really useful to follow people, organizations and companies that are associated with your target area. Twitter itself helps you find important people in particular fields. Along with that “Twellow” is a good tool that helps you find people in your area of interest.

Connect
Its just pointless if you follow people and they don’t know who you are and whether you exist or not! Connect with potentially useful contacts by replying to their tweets “smartly”, following links they post to their blog posts and then posting comments there and even asking them advices and suggestions on any doubts you may have related to the field. Asking questions make them feel important and they know you’re giving value to their advices. This will place you in their mind and might eventually help you further down the lane.

Tweet Smart. Don’t Spam.
Once you have started connecting to people and have slowly started making your presence felt in the Twitter world, it becomes increasingly important that you tweet smartly. Don’t just keep posting a million links without even reading what they are. Don’t spam. Twitter takes spamming seriously and once anyone feels you’re a spammer, they might just block/report you. Stay relevant to your topic and maybe even drop in a bit of humor and personal touch once a while. Though personal branding is important don’t tweet too much about yourself. Post informative and useful stuff which will help in giving off a good professional vibe.

Also, take care to avoid grammatical errors and spelling mistakes in your tweet along with swearing, lying and posting inappropriate content.

Offer Your Help
You can prove your authenticity and goodwill by offering help to other tweeters. This may be by just answering a poll, clearing a doubt they have or providing link to a useful source they are in need of. This will make an impression that you’re a good listener too and also a helpful person. Most of them would be glad o return the favor by maybe informing you first when they come to know of a job listing that might be apt for you.

Ask For Help
Feel free to ask for help. There are a number of people out there ready to help you if you just ask them. As you’ll gradually learn, most experts in their respective fields are glad and happy to help newcomers. Best example, based on personal experience, I would recommend is “Eric Weaver”, veteran digital marketer. He’s been pretty helpful to many newcomers in the SMM field and is always available to lend a helping hand.

Be Cautious
If you get a tweet or DM from someone you haven’t been interacting with or haven’t been told about, offering you a “Dream Job”, be wary. Just as there are a million non-existent, questionable, or even illegal jobs disguised as legit positions on listings websites, they can also appear on Twitter and other Social Media platforms.

Just cater to these points and am sure you’ll be able to utilize Twitter to its fullest. Do let me know if you have any other points to add to this list.
Other articles in this series include-

  1. How  To Effectively Use Social Media To Land A Job
  2. How To Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile For Job Search
  3. How To Use Facebook For Your Job Search