If you are just starting on Twitter or have been using your account for a little while, it may be worth having a quick look at your profile again. The content could be the reason why you attract followers you don’t have an affinity with. Or maybe people you follow are not interested in following you back.

I had this conversation with a fellow coach last week and I thought I would share this on the blog.

What is a Twitter profile?

The list of information you can enter in your Twitter account’s profile page:

•   Picture
•   Name
•   Location
•   Web address
•   Bio
Go to Twitter Settings and click the tab labelled ‘Profile’ if you want to make some changes to the content. This information appears on your public profile and search results, including Google and Bing.

How to make your profile more interesting?

Starting with the end in mind, check again the reasons why you are using Twitter. They may have changed since you wrote your profile. In any case, if you are clear about your objectives in the first place, it makes it easier to know what to say. So who would you like to connect with and why? Where are they based? What are they interested in? Who do they follow and why?

1/ Add a photo of you

It’s nice for people to know who you are and they can also recognise you. That’s useful if you attend offline networking events for example. Often the default Twitter image is thought to be used by spammers. So people don’t tend to follow someone who hasn’t changed the image (unless they know them personally).

2/ Use your name

Twitter recommends using a real name because people like to know who is behind the tweets before they connect. That’s useful for google search rankings of your name as well.

3/ Define your location

This is a useful entry. If you want to network with local users, than you can specify the town where you are based or the ones you visit on a regular basis. It also gives more credibility to your profile and people are more likely to follow you.

4/ Add your web link

Where else can people find out a bit more about you? It could be a link to your linkedIn profile, your website or your blog. Even better, a landing page you have created specifically to welcome Twitter users. That way, you can really tailor your message to your followers.

5/ Complete your bio

Twitter allows only 160 characters for the bio, so 20 more than for a normal tweet. As it is searchable, try to use key words if you want to be found online. As I like to work with coaches and therapists, I have mentioned this fact in my profile. Do you have any particular hobby you would like to talk about on Twitter? What are you usually tweeting about? It could be a great conversation starter.

Often, if some of the information is missing in the profile, people will be reluctant to follow you or you may attract followers you are not interested in. For example, my surname can easily be confused with a Spanish word that means bathroom. So I have many Spanish speaking bathroom suppliers that follow me! These are automated bots of course.

Hope you found this post useful, especially if you are new on Twitter or want to reach out to more people. If you found it interesting, feel free to follow me at @isabellebano for more tips and ideas.

photo credit: Creative Tools