by Murray Lunn

Created on: September 29, 2010

Building your online brand takes time and effort but if you do seek this path of personal branding you’ll be rewarded with a fanatical following, networking opportunities and the ability to launch new projects with the backing of your community.

Twitter, like any other social networking tool, can be the perfect place to start building your authority, expertise and ultimately, your brand. The following guide will help you go from relatively unknown to a building a strong brand using the social media service.

* Step 1: Fill out your profile, background and picture *

The first thing people will see is your picture, background and profile information. Much like handing a business card to another individual, you’ll want to take special care to convey your expertise but also draw them into learning more and potentially following you through Twitter.

For your picture, you could use your logo but people associate one another through their appearance so your face would be best. Your profile should also convey who you are and what you do without being too cute or too straight forward; find the balance between fun and original. Finally, your background gives you the ability to add additional information about yourself – use this extra space for anything else you couldn’t fit within your profile much like a miniature resume.

* Step 2: Begin to network with those that matter *

There are literally millions of users on Twitter but not all of them are the ones you will want to network with. If it’s your first time using the service, begin building your brand by connecting with your peers; avoid those that have many thousands of followers for the time being because you’ll want to become known on your level before trying to talk with those that have the most influence on Twitter.

As your follow count continues to build through conversations, networking, sharing content and following those that matter; you’ll see people begin to talk and share what you have to say.

Continue to build your following one person at a time until you deem you’re well known enough to begin breaking from the pack and become recognize for your brand.

* Step 3: Share the best possible information you can *

Twitter is used for conversation but one major element of the social media service is the sharing of content. Many users abuse the social media service with a constant onslaught of content spam; instead of trying to tweet and retweet everything

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