5 Tips to Build an Awesome Personal Brand on Twitter

Want to build a personal brand as a developer? This is your guide.

Aug 29, 2021

Tech Twitter is known for its enormous potential for seeking opportunities and building long-lasting professional relationships (networking).

Today, we’ll explore a few simple ways to leverage Twitter not only to build your personal brand on the platform but also to learn in public.

Also, don’t forget to subscribe to MichiSpotlight. You’ll be able to read these articles right in your inbox every Sunday at 7 PM.

I’ve been a little inactive recently because I’ve been swamped with work, and not many great topics come to mind when it’s preoccupied with stuff. Let me know if you want me to write or talk about something specific via my YouTube channel or the Newsletter.

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Tweet of the Week

Vaishnavi Dwivedi @dwvicy

I shifted my resume to Google Docs from Overleaf because it's more convenient to make quick modifications before submitting it. In the end it doesn't matter because you have to convert it into a pdf anyway. Which platform did you use to make yours?

Let’s get started:

So, every day on my Twitter DMs, I get questions like this:

In this newsletter, we’ll discuss how one can create a personal brand on Twitter and what are some benefits of doing so?

Benefits of Building a Personal Brand (on Twitter)

There are a gazillion benefits of building a personal brand on Twitter, all of which take time to reap. Building a personal brand requires persistent efforts every day. Initially, it would seem futile, but eventually, if you stay consistent and try to incorporate everything mentioned in the guide (and some of your own unique magic), you’d be able to see the results for yourself.

Some of the benefits I got from building my personal brand on Twitter:

(PS. Imma brag) —

I got a lot of great speakers for my podcast.
More people started reading my newsletter.
I literally got internships offers in my DMs.
I got invited to speak at many different events/workshops.
Interacted and Networked with some of the best people in tech (via Twitter spaces).

The success of your personal brand is eventually a measure of how you personally benefitted from having a strong presence on a certain platform. It doesn’t matter if your follower count is 50 or 5,000.

PS. Followers do matter sometimes, but honestly, some people have 50k followers, yet they get no engagement on their tweets. Engagement matters because it reflects how many people interact with your tweet, i.e., you and your thoughts.

Tip #1: Optimize your Twitter Profile

Focus on the basic stuff first. I’ve seen people who don’t even have a profile picture set up asking advice on building a PB on Twitter.
Leverage all the possible real estate on your Twitter profile.

Whenever someone opens your profile to understand who you are, they should easily seek an answer to that question after going through your profile.

Tip #2: Identifying your niche

Identifying your niche is probably one of the first things you should do when starting your Twitter journey.
Although I am a generalist, it took me a lot of time to figure that out.
You don’t immediately need to know what you want to tweet about regularly, but eventually, after dabbling with different kinds of tweets on different topics, try to understand a fit between your interests and your potential followers’ needs.
Focus on two to three areas where you want to contribute to constructively. Shitposting shouldn’t be one (although sometimes it helps).

Tip #3: Learn/Build in Public

Many students, especially beginners, participate in #100DaysofCode or #66DaysofData.
They tweet about stuff they learned during the day. Such tweets can help you talk more about your learnings - the challenges you faced or the things you built. This will help you interact with devs in a better way.
If you’re not a beginner and don’t want to participate in such stuff, you can also talk about your side projects or open-source contributions. This will increase your credibility as a developer and motivate beginners to be more consistent and start building projects or contributing to open source.
You can also talk about the process of building your podcast or YouTube channel, or newsletter.
Some people are also known for curating content, collecting a bunch of content, and putting it together for people to read.

These activities build your credibility in the field you want to pursue a career or just things you want to be known for.

Tip #4: Attend/Organize Twitter Spaces

Twitter Spaces is perhaps the best way to connect with people on a one-on-one basis. I’ve interacted with so many great people via this feature on Twitter. It’s the reason I became active on Twitter after 3.5 years of inactivity.

Twitters Spaces can be exhausting since they go on for a long time. I suggest jumping on a particular space, look at the topic of discussion. If it seems interesting, then listen in for some time. If the topic is something you’d like to talk about too, request to speak.
If you want to organize a twitter space, try to schedule it beforehand to set reminders. Send invites to people via DMs too.
Set out at least two hours for a space if you’re hosting one. People get annoyed when we leave the space in the middle of a great discussion just because the host can’t stay any longer. (if the host leaves, the space ends for everyone).

I posted about a Twitter space I hosted a few months back on polywork.

Tip #5: Master the art of DMs

DMing people is critical to stay connected with them on a personal level.
It’s not just for you to ask doubts and stuff but to build a nice professional relationship with them with a hint of friendliness. These conversations go a long way.

Here’s a tweet that will help you understand how to DM people without it getting awkward:

Vaishnavi Dwivedi @dwvicy

Many people say that DMs are the best way to network on twitter. How do you slide into someone's DMs without being annoying? Like what excuses do you use? Tell me now 🥺🔫