Twitter Skills That Matter For Your Career

As a career executive, if you are not on twitter, you have not yet arrived in the management field. They say Twitter is a quagmire of fake news, political partisanships, and in India, religious divider. 

But from a corporate point of view, it is a place of limitless possibilities with connections to opinion makers, shapers and actual customers. It is also a great place for your customers to reach out to you and resolve their issues. Imagine the potential to engage more than 300 million active users every month.  

Here are a few pointers for brightening up your career with key Twitter skills. 

Find your passion and focus on that. Everyone says this but if you want to be seen as a marketing pro, you should continually post on your passionate topics and establish yourself as an expert or thought leader in that area. Within your organization or functional role, take initiative to write content around say WFH, if your passion is about work-life balance, in the current time. It is also a good idea to take up some internal sessions for your own organization via the web or video calls and the same content can be tweeted. Participate in blogs or discussion groups of media companies, leading minds etc. Other companies may want to recruit such experts on twitter since their tweets on their handle will make them look good as well. 

Expand your reach. Enterprises will be dependent on digital media more and more post-corona and they will seek out influencers. As a marketing executive, you need to find those influencers who have a reasonable number of followers, say around 30000 instead of 400000. Your tweets may find a better chance of getting responses from such folks because of the lower number of notifications they get. If you get someone like Shah Rukh Khan to respond, that has huge value. Depending on your passion area or company priorities search for such reach. Followers of Shah Rukh could be future influencers for instance and the reach can grow further over time. It is a good idea to identify up to 5 huge reaches Twitterati and develop a rapport with them. Research their interests and align with your passion or goal. 

Immerse more. WFH can be disastrous for some folks and especially Twitter is full of pessimistic tweets. Yet, there are some posts by leading minds that stand out for their content. It will be great for you to stay smart and learn from such folks. Career executives and marketing executives ought to consider Twitter as the platform for learning and development and as a media that allows them quick access to thought leaders in their field. You should re-tweet messages that you feel are relevant in your passion or chosen area with a brief note so that you develop your own standing.  

Think before posting. Control emotions and quick retort tendencies. It is easy to press the Tweet button and even high-level executives do not think even after they posted inappropriate comments or videos. The content you post could even cost you your job if not done right. If your profile identifies you as belonging to a particular company, you will be damaging the employer too. Even if you have a strong political or otherwise opinion on some issues, you cannot afford to speak out everything in tweets. You need to realise the depth of problems 280 characters can cause, as it may come back later to haunt you when you are in a very senior role. 

Remember you don’t know everything. Even in your chosen area, you can’t know answers to everything. So, do not get intimidated by more experienced professionals in the specific area. Speak or tweet authoritatively if you are totally certain about something. Do not show your prejudice and shallow knowledge by showing off with unwanted comments. Experts can see through you. Aspiring to become an influencer is good, but you cannot force influence on others. It is also good to learn something from others in tweets to get more followers. 

Don’t be self-obsessed. Even if you are a die-hard fan of Modi, don’t imitate him blindly. Twitter is like a virtual party place and no one likes those who talk only of themselves, just as in the real world. Do not make the mistake of talking only about you or your work achievements. Share other tweets that are relevant to your passion, comment on others tweets and follow those whom you respect and want to learn from on your passionate topics. Those who are known for their network on your chosen area of experts should be tagged on your relevant posts. Respect the intelligence of others and re-tweet what these people post if relevant to your network. That will help raise your own status amongst the community you are reaching out to. 

Dr M Muneer

Guest Author The author is Co-founder and Chief Evangelist at the non-profit Medici Institute Foundation for Diversity and Innovation; and also the CEO of CustomerLab Solutions, a strategy execution and disruptive innovation consulting firm.