How Twitter shaped my career

This week marked my tenth Twitter anniversary. I thought it'd be a good opportunity to jog my memory back and reflect on how it helped me in shaping my career.

Polish tweets

I was only thirteen when I joined the platform and I was clueless. I can't remember my first tweet and it's no longer available. But it was definitely something wildly uninteresting, and in Polish.

I had a phase of tweeting in English, while still living in Poland. I then deleted all my tweets when I moved to live in London and my Twitter feed became a tabula rasa. That didn't last for too long.

Not just news

University days helped me realise Twitter is a powerful tool. It's a platform to not only find out breaking news, but tool to connect with others, start and join conversations, and learn from them.

I was tweeting a lot of industry-related content and this led to me landing my first comms job while I was still at the university. Sam Howard saw that I knew how to run my own Twitter account and recruited me to do the same for her company, Comms Crowd. I became agency's chief tweeter.

Connecting with others

Twitter has also opened other doors for me. I first connected with Stephen Waddington through the platform. I tweeted about 'Share This Too', which Stephen edited, from university's library. Since then, we kept in touch and met for a few breakfasts. He also helped me with my dissertation (which was also very Twitter-centric). Stephen and I work together now and we've originated Comms School.

Apart from Stephen, thanks to Twitter, I've met some other incredible people. Ella Minty, David Gallagher, Sarah Stimson, and Richard Bailey, among so many others, were the industry luminaries I first connected with using Twitter.

Because of the platform, I've also met with some of the brightest industry peers (including Arianne Smart and Jenny Sanchis) as well as comms students (including Orlagh Shanks and Jess Pardoe).

Blogging and getting ahead

All those connections I've made played a huge part in my career and blogging. I've won a few accolades, while being still early on in my career. But most importantly, Twitter has been a tool for me to learn new things and explore ideas.

You, too, can use Twitter to your advantage. Here are my top tips.

Top tips on making the most of Twitter

#1 Find your niche. Find the community that resonates with you and your values#2 Connect with others in the community. Join the conversation and see if you can continue your chat offline as well#3 Be authentic. Personal branding matters, but your brand online needs to correspond with your persona offline

#4 Be interested. A lot of people are afraid they're not interesting enough. The key to being interesting is simply being interested

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Thank you for all those amazing years, Twitter. You're great and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Picture in the header also via Twitter. 

If you have any suggestions, would like to guest post or give me a feedback, feel free to email me at kl.marcel [at] gmail.com, tweet me @marcelkl or connect with me on LinkedIn. Thanks for stopping by, have a splendid day!