A Professional Image and Twitter

Twitter is a great resource to connect with others and provide short updates on what’s up in your world. It’s an easy way to engage your audience and share a bit about yourself and your projects.

However, with all great resources comes the possibility of abuse, or overuse. Here are a few tips on how to maintain a professional image:

* Be professional.You are creating a brand and anything you post reflects back on you and your brand. (By professional, I mean things like use proper grammar, put your best face forward, don’t trash the competition, ensure you have a link to how to contact you, etc.)

* Decide what image you want to convey and stick to it.

* Decide how much of your personal life you want accessible to strangers. Anything you put out there (online) is fair game for a future interviewer or journalist. If you don’t want it in the papers or on TV, don’t put it out there. If you become famous, do you want your family in the spotlight or poor-taste jokes you made three years ago finding their way into the spotlight? Think ahead.

* Post a nice profile picture. Any picture you put online (or someone else does) could find its way into print, even if you only post it for a day or two. Nothing on the Internet is ever really gone. If you are tagged on Facebook, it is possible to untag yourself so those pictures don’t show up in searches.

* Don’t trash others. If you are cornered or really want to vent, take extra care to be diplomatic in your response. Or even better, change the subject and later vent to someone who will take your secrets to the grave. Note that what you say reflects back upon you in more ways than one. If you discuss certain traits about a person, the listener automatically and unconsciously attaches those traits to you. So, if you say someone’s writing sucks, they attribute that trait to you. Plus, it looks really bad and can lead to making you unlikeable–think of the reaction there has been over Stephen King dissing Stephanie Meyer and her writing skills.

* Don’t overdo it. Nobody wants to read 40 tweets by you every day. Not even your mom. (Sorry, it’s true.) We don’t need to know that you are in line at Starbucks or that you just pulled a foot long booger out of your kid’s nose. Well, maybe we do want to hear that so we can call The Guinness Book of World Records on your behalf.

* Be helpful when you can.

* Don’t keep posting the same things over and over. Don’t keep posting the same things over and over.

* Don’t shamelessly promote yourself at every turn. People will naturally become interested in you and your books if you engage in conversations that aren’t  all about you and your work and if you act as a resource. If a topic comes up where you can slide in some information about your book, by all means provide a short pitch and a link to where it can be purchased. But try and be subtle. For example, “One of the toughest secondary character experiences I had was writing Katie for my recently released book Caviar and Lemon Drops. Katie busted right into the scene and I had to go back and work her own POV and conflicts into the story. While it was a pain, it was well worth it and I feel she gives my story that extra kick it needed.”

* Worth stating again is grammar and spelling. If you are sloppy about your grammar and spelling, people are going to assume you are a hack. Every thing you write reflects back on you. And for Heaven’s sake, use caps. Yes, I am saying capitalize ‘I.’

* If you post your work online, make sure it is your best.

* Try not to swear. I know. Sometimes it can be f*%$ing hard, but you don’t want to risk offending someone when there are other words you could use to show your feelings.

While these tips are aimed at Twitter, they apply to all facets of social networking, both on and offline. Good luck young grasshoppers. May the force be with you!