By Jason Bayless
College students seeking to make a name for themselves know that being engaged online socially can prove advantageous, especially when looking for a job. You can use Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, Digg and other sites to advance what you do, with Twitter quite possibly holding an advantage for you despite its propensity to being overused or misused. The same techniques used by search engine marketing (SEM) professionals can be used by you as you send out your tweets.
The Link
The connection between what an SEM guru does and what the college student wants to do with Twitter may not be obvious at first. But, because SEM means optimizing websites for marketing purposes, you can also optimize your Twitter experience to achieve the same.
Fundamentals
College students using Twitter should take a serious approach to this vital social media platform even if other users do not. This means setting up your account accordingly, creating a profile that describes who you are and what you do. On some other platforms you may want to remain anonymous, but on Twitter your public face should be made known.
Develop your biography carefully and learn how other people in your field write their own. Use a handle, or name, that is simple and one that reflects your name or what you do such as aspiring-teacher.
Your School
Know what your school’s policy on Internet usage is, an important factor if you use Twitter and other social media websites on college computers. This is important to know because if you violate your school’s social media policies, you could find yourself in trouble. Take care before you send out your first tweet!
Tweeting Consistency
With Twitter, you are know by several things including your handle, who you connect with and how often your tweet. It is so easy to sign up for any social media site and simply neglect it soon thereafter.
Tell yourself that you will send out regular tweets, perhaps two or three times per day. Use a social media application platform such as Tweetdeck to schedule your tweets, enabling you to send out your thoughts even when you are not around.
Sharing Matters
Quite easily, you can post or tweet anything on Twitter. And that is where some people get into trouble. You are not on Twitter to make a name for yourself, or at least a name that is known for tweeting highly controversial if not polarizing messages.
Marketers understand that their tweets are being directed at a certain audience and you should understand that too. Give everyone your best tweets and know that the information you share can be read by millions of users including potential employers.
Pick and Choose
Some people offer an endless stream of online babble with Twitter, messages that tend to get lost in a sea of tweets. Typically, when people use Twitter too much, other users tend to shun them except spammers themselves.
Be original when using Twitter, check your spelling, be careful with your grammar and serve up information this is interesting, informative and relevant. You can archive your tweets too by using a service such as Backupify to save your tweets to the cloud. Why would you want to save your tweets? You may need them to verify a comment that you allegedly said.
Brand Yourself
Every person that uses Twitter is an individual. Some people are also a brand. What this means is that their tweets are so valued that they have created a loyal following and can be counted on to share their tips or advice on a regular basis.
As a college student, you may wonder how search engine marketing or branding can apply to you. That is quite easy, actually. For instance, if you are an engineering student, you can offer comments about various news events or share a professor’s findings. Provide a link to a related site and a related picture too. Make good use of hashtags and reshare or retweet messages that benefit your followers.
Work Together
Twitter offers a great platform to help people learn to work together. Team skills are valued by companies as these attributes demonstrate that you are able to work with others and are not a solitary commodity.
It is more difficult to work as a team then going it alone, but your camaraderie online can set you apart and make you a valuable prospect for a new job. Demonstrate leadership, but also show that you can follow too. Ask for advice and respond to comments.
College Connections
Most certainly, connect with people at your college — professors, staff and other students. Your connections are people that can help you best and are individuals you are more likely to meet in person.
Your college connections can stay with you for years beyond your academic stint. Strong colleges and universities are not merely identified by their educational prowess, but also by the strength of their alumnae. Use Twitter to help you stay connected and to market yourself online.
Jason Bayless is a professional blogger that gives small business and entrepreneurs SEO advice. He writes for BestSEOCompanies.com, a nationally recognized SEO Company comparison website.