Your Presence on Twitter

            So you’ve discovered the world of Twitter, full of blue birds and enlightening messages of 140 characters or less. I am going to assume that you aren’t completely new to Twitter and that you have at least foothold in the arena of Twitter and go ahead and just give you some tips to create and maintain a professional presence on Twitter.

            First and foremost before anything else Twitter is just another extension to your online persona, and as such it should be monitored as far as content goes. We all know that what goes on the Internet stays on the Internet for the whole world to see.

Your Avatar

            Make sure your photo is professional and up to date. It’s the first thing people look at on any kind of online account. As far as your bio goes, Twitter only gives you 160 characters to write it, so make them count. You don’t need to add any unnecessary fluff.

Your Thoughts

            One of the things that stumped me when I first started to use Twitter was that I wasn’t sure what to tweet about. You should primarily tweet about things relating to your profession,             or at least are ‘on topic.’ You don’t have to tweet about every little detail of your life on Twitter. This may sound harsh, but no one really cares. Google Alerts is a great resource to stay up to date on topics relating to your profession and to give inspirations to your tweets.

Your Connections

            Twitter is a wonderful marketing and networking tool. It is so easy to find anyone on there and just to follow them. But to really establish a relationship you need to go beyond just following them. Like any relationship, it’s a give and take. Lend your expertise and knowledge to them just as they do to you. Share things that you find interesting that they may enjoy as well. And if they share things that you like, retweet them.

            Twitter is great to get the ball rolling to establish those relationships and network yourself to new people, or even future employers. But you should take those relationships beyond Twitter. It is a great place to start. Just remember to keep it professional.

Gramma Knows Best

    Most people know that when you meet someone for the first time or establish a relationship with someone that there are certain social norms that are expected to be met. The Internet is really no different. Yes, it is a much different platform, but first impressions online matter just as much as first impressions in person. If anything, they matter more, because anything that happens on the Internet is next to permanent. They written word is much more powerful than the spoken word. It can be evaluated much more in depth than the spoken word. I think that is one of the most important things to take away from this article about the manners of social media.

http://socialmediatoday.com/SMC/191214

              

    Just because you CAN put it on the Internet doesn’t mean you should. I think a lot of people would benefit from just taking a few seconds to really evaluate what they have to say and ask themselves if this is really something worth sharing. As with any relationship, maintaining the connections with social media takes work. You will reach out to people and they will reach out to you in return. Social media makes it easy for us to connect and find people with interest relevant to our own, but it also makes it easy to ignore those that we don’t want to listen to or just have nothing of interest to say.

Profession Dress In The Workplace

Dress for the job you want, not the job you have.                         

I have heard this phrase since I have started my college experience, probably even before that. Appropriate dress in the workplace, while extremely important, can be a little confusing. I know that when I went in to interview for my first internship I was extremely nervous. Not only was I nervous because this was my first real grown up interview and I really wanted the job, but because I wasn’t quite sure what to wear. I had no idea what kind of dress code they had, and I was poor college student who didn’t really have any professional clothes to speak of. So off shopping I went, and quickly became overwhelmed at the amount of ‘professional’ clothing offered in the stores. Some of which I was not sure actually fell into the ‘professional’ dress category. So I went for simple, yet well put together. When in doubt KISS. Keep It Simple Stupid. 

Now when I actually went into my interview, it went great and I got the job and was ecstatic. However I left feeling confused. I was interviewed by two men; one came in wearing a suit the other wearing jeans and a button down shirt. Talk about mixed messages. The first few weeks I dressed nicer than their dress code probably called for, but is that really a bad thing? No, it really isn’t.

I think that at the core of knowing how to dress well is to just keep it simple. I did a ton of research about professional dress before my interview and found list after list of what to wear and what not to wear. How to do your hair and you makeup and your nails and what shoes you should wear. It went on and on. It seemed like a lot of rules, but I think what they were trying to get across was in its simplest form is to dress like you care.

In the end what it really boils down to, is to dress like you care. You want to be respected and to look like you know what you are doing. Dress for your part or for the part you want. You may be the most knowledgeable person in your field, have the most credentials, graduated from the best school. But if you don’t look like that person no one will believe you are that person. Appearances have a huge impact on how people perceive us. That may seem shallow, but it's the truth.