10 Ways to Harness Twitter final

Follow us @PosIgnition www.positionignition.com

10 Ways to Harness Twitter

Some people might see Twitter as nothing more than a massive time-waster, but used in the right way, this social media site can be the job seeker’s best friend. Here are 10 tips for leveraging Twitter in your job search. 1. Make the Most of Your Bio You only have 160 characters for your bio so make them count. Make it clear what you want and what value you are bringing i.e. “As a senior HR executive with over 25 years’ experience in HR, I’m currently looking for an interim position in Y type of organisation”. Don’t be shy about including your best qualities in your bio. The Twitter bio is like a first impression you make on people who are seeing your Twitter page for the first time, so give them a reason to find out more about you. 2. Get Ready for Your Close-Up Use a real photo of yourself. It’s important to upload a photo on your Twitter profile and it’s just as important that it’s a photo of you. As hilarious as putting up a photo of a cat in a bow tie or Simon Cowell is, it doesn’t look very professional in the eyes of potential employers looking at your profile. Choose a photo that shows a lot of your face. The closer up your face is in the photo, the more personal—and therefore trustworthy—it appears.


3. Plan Who to Connect With Before you start tweeting and interacting heavily on Twitter, think about what you want your Twitter account and presence here to be about. What are you here for, what are looking to get out of it and what are your priorities, aims and ambitions? By answering these questions, you can deduce who it would be best for you to connect with. Once you know what types of account you want to follow and be followed by, life on Twitter becomes a whole lot easier. 4. Follow Your Dream Employer If you start your Twitter job search already having an idea of who you want to work for, you have a great head start. By following an employer you are interested in working for and reading all their latest updates you will be able to keep on top of the latest priorities, activities and focus areas for the business as a whole. This can give you an edge when going in for interviews and applying for roles as it gives you an insight into the organisation that others may be lacking. 5. Check Out Job Site Streams As well as individual employer organizations, there are also a lot of job sites and online job boards on Twitter. Follow the job sites most relevant to your niche and check their streams regularly. They’ll often tweet links to vacancies as soon as they come out. Use Twitter’s own job search site. Visit the website to search for specific jobs and/or follow it @TwitJobSearch. Use the advanced search link by filling in relevant keywords and information aligned to your job search goals – and use it to focus your job search. 6. Mingle With the Movers and Shakers Use directories of Twitter users to look for people and organizations directly related to your ideal job or career. The most well-known Twitter directory is Twellow. You can also list yourself on it so people can find you too. To the right of your Twitter homepage, you’ll see a section where Twitter recommends people to follow, based on your profile and who you’re already following. Don’t dismiss these suggestions but look at the recommended profiles to see if they really could be useful to your job search. 7. Tweet Regularly If you tweet infrequently, you’ll find it harder to build up relationships with your followers and will lose the momentum of Twitter as a job search tool. Tweeting regularly can be easier said than done. So, where can you find the time to tweet on top of your current work and your job research? Remember that Twitter is part of your job search strategy, so you should do what you can to make time to tweet, even if it means getting up a bit earlier each morning, or using your phone to tweet during your lunch break.


8. Stay Professional If you are job hunting, the bulk of your tweets should be business related. They don’t all have to be job search related but they should be professional. Make them related to your area of work, area of interest and where you are looking to get into for your next role. However, there are some things about your current job that you should not tweet about, such as boasting that you spend all your time at work on Twitter or criticisms of your boss. 9. Showcase Your Expertise Use tweeting to show off your knowledge and expertise if you can. Share your own specific thoughts, ideas, insight and opinions that demonstrate your knowledge and that can build up your reputation as the ‘go to’ person for your field. Think of these tweets as ‘thought leadership tweets’. If someone tweets you a question about your area of expertise don’t just benefit them with the answer but let the depth of your knowledge be known to all your followers. Do this by RTing (Re-tweeting) the question and putting your answer in front of it. 10. Have a Tweetchat Join in tweetchats relevant to your field. A tweetchat is a Twitter conversation, typically held at a pre-arranged, regular weekly time, between a group of Twitter users, and using a specific hashtag to identify the discussion. For instance, if you’re in PR, or interested in breaking into the sector, try the #pr20chat. There are even tweetchats specific to finding a new job or career, such as #JobHuntChat and #careerchat. People often use tweetchats to share links so do the same—link to your site, blog or something else that says something about your strengths and where you want to be.

This checklist has been created by Position Ignition Ltd, one of the UK’s leading career consulting companies and founders of the Career Ignition Club. Please contact [email protected] for more information or to suggest additional resources.

Documents

10 Ways to Harness Twitter final