Get More Out of Twitter: Develop a Complete Profile

My client, Jeremy Shapiro (@JeremyShapiro), co-founder of ForeclosuresMass, and I were talking about Twitter profiles the other day.

Both of us agreed that we generally don’t follow people if the person’s profile is incomplete. If you’d like to get more out of Twitter, it pays to develop a complete profile using these five tips:

1. Add your “real name” via the Settings tab — I often search for people on Twitter that I’ve read or heard about (or heard speak) using their first and last names. Often, I can’t find them. 

You can make it easy for people to find you by adding your first and last name in the “Settings” tab of Twitter. This way, when someone does a search, you’re easily found.

This is especially important if your Twitter screen name isn’t your real name — as is the case with sales lead expert Mac McIntosh (@B2B_Sales_Leads):

2. Include your geographic area — If you don’t want to include your exact town, use the metro area to which you’re closest, i.e. Boston, MA, Silicon Valley, Seattle, WA. It’s also ok to list just your state – as Mac does in his profile and as I do in mine.

You want to list your geographic region because other people with the same name  may also be on Twitter. If you search for Jeremy Shapiro, for example, you’ll find five people with that name. Because my client Jeremy includes his photo and geographic region, I know he’s the one I want to follow:

I want to know people’s locations because I like to follow those within New Hampshire and Massachusetts — and it’s the same for other Twitter users across the US. (It also makes it easy to learn about TweetUps based on specific locales.)

I also like to follow a few people outside of the U.S. in order to get a different perspective on things.

3. Link to your blog / Website / Google profile — Twitter can feel a tad stalkerish: you’re following people you don’t know, people you don’t know are following you — so it’s good to give people additional info about yourself  by linking to your Website, blog, or Google profile.  (It’s also a great way to drive additional traffic and/or newsletter subscriptions.)

4. Write an interesting bio — Too many times people use the Twitter bio as a throwaway field and list ho-hum attributes . . . “Social media expert, Internet marketer, runner, coffee drinker, dad.”

(As an FYI, it seems almost everyone on Twitter is some kind of social media expert — I’ve stopped following these people because I want new perspectives.)

See if you can write a 140-character bio that’s 1) interesting, 2) makes you stand out and 3) is a pleasure to read.

Don’t be afraid to include a bit of personal information. In addition to living and breathing B2B marketing, I enjoy working out at the gym, reading all kinds of books, magazines, and newspapers (business and pleasure), and spending time with my son (who is a total geek), so I included all these things in my profile.

I knew I had my profile nailed when a colleague emailed me a couple of weeks ago to say, “Your Twitter profile cracked me up!” 

If you’re copywriter, writing your bio should be a piece of cake — it’s the same as writing one of those 25-word ad blurbs.

5. Include a photo of yourself — If you’re using Twitter for business purposes and you’re a woman, a photo of you posing provacatively probably isn’t the best way to present yourself. Jeremy says that if you’re a man, you don’t want a photo of yourself hoisting a beer.

Whatever you do, don’t fall back on the Twitter default avatar — using it means you’re a clueless Twitter newbie.

What are your pet peeves about Twitter profiles and what makes you decide to follow a person?