Twitter was founded in 2006.  The fledgling platform was ready for its first tweet on March 21, after eight days of programming, according to Twitter creator and co-founder Jack Dorsey.

And in the time since then, here are some stunning numbers on Twitter’s growth:

• 3 years, 2 months and 1 day. The time it took from the first Tweet to the billionth Tweet.
• 1 week. The time it now takes for users to send a billion Tweets.
• 50 million. The average number of Tweets people sent per day, one year ago.
• 140 million. The average number of Tweets people sent per day, in the last month.
  
• 460,000. Average number of new accounts per day over the last month..

Twitter is MASSIVE for relationship-building with otherwise unattainable people in your niche.

It is the ultimate leveler.

And ultimate personal brand amplifier.

IF you do it right.

Twitter can most powerfully be used to build relationships with people in your niche…

In fact, it turns out that the “A-Listers” in your industry are probably active Twitter users…

and much more accessible via Twitter than any other means of contact!

Also – just having conversations with folks in this public forum allows you to catch the eye of the right people.

You could call this CONVERSATION MARKETING.

If your followers see that you’re having a Twitter conversation with an “A-Lister” in your industry, that immediately strengthens YOUR personal brand.

The power of Twitter shouldn’t be overlooked.

Twitter, like WordPress in blogging, has a great ecosystem.

This means that there are lots of 3^rd-party developers that create all kinds of nifty tools, which integrate with Twitter.

It expands the range of what you can do with the tool to incredible breadths.

But don’t be distracted by the cool Twitter tools!

(I went through that phase – so I know of what I speak. Ha ha!)

The most important thing is good, old-fashioned relationship building.

And you don’t need any fancy tools for that.

Just sign-up, customize your look, start posting valuable content, and then follow people in your niche.

So how do you take advantage of the huge quantity and quality of conversations happening RIGHT NOW on Twitter?

(drum roll)… 12 Ways to Build Your Personal Brand in Twitter:

1. Choose a good branded Twitter Handle:

   There was a bit of a “gold rush” when Twitter first became popular.

   Unfortunately some folks decided to squat on Twitter handles for famous people, and famous brands.

   While you probably don’t have someone squatting on the Twitter handle matching your name, you may have a namesake that’s ahead of you.

   If so, get creative about modifying your name (within the confines of about 13 characters.)

   If your Twitter handle isn’t based on your name, then it can be based on your web site.

   But you don’t want to stray from those two options.

2. Work on your Twitter Bio and Link:

   Have a clear and concise bio… and then link to your blog.

   The bio should contain your value proposition (as in, what will you do to be useful to subscribers?

   If you use Twitter several times a week, you can even link to your most recent blog post… and update that link as appropriate.

3. Get a nice Twitter background image:

   TwitPaper, TwitterImage, TwitrBackgrounds, and TwitBacks are all good places to look for a suitable background.

   The Twitter background offers ample branding opportunities.

   You can add your personal photo (a large one this time, not like the Twitter profile pic),
   You can include a short bio, and
   You can include your social media URLs.

4. Feed your blog content into Twitter :

   Look to use tools like Twitterfeed, Pluggio, SocialOomph.

   This is an effective way to share your latest blog content with your Twitter followers – thus attracting traffic, and to a certain extent, new blog subscribers.

   You can also integrate Twitter into your blog, using a 3^rd-party blog plugin.
   This will show your latest tweets on your web site (often in the sidebar), and will encourage cross-pollination of content, ideas, and followers.

5. Position yourself as an expert:

   There are lots of ways to do this.  They all revolve around being useful.

   Schedule Q&A sessions with your followers,

   Build lists featuring your key topics that link your followers to other Tweeters who provide value…

   things like that.

   The more value you give the valuable you become.  And the more value you eventually receive.

6. Create a Twitter networking / mastermind group:

   With a Twitter group of like-minded individuals, you can actively retweet each other’s content.

   But ONLY when the content is relevant and valuable.

7. Resist the urge to sell.

   There are already too many spam emails on Twitter.  Use for relationship-building, instead.

   You can use your blog for selling. But selling on Twitter might be akin to standing on the side of the street, trying to get passersby to buy hubcaps from you.

   Build a relationship first, then you’ll be able to sell more hubcaps.

   Note that selling on Twitter does earn some marketers money, but these marketers are not focused on relationship-building or personal branding.
   They churn-and-burn their followers, basically.  And you don’t want that for your brand.

8. Use a real profile picture:

   People want human interaction.  You are the brand – so use your face.

9. Add the retweet button to your blog posts:

   But be sure to configure the blog plug-in so that when it offers the retweet text, it features YOUR Twitter handle, and not @tweetmeme (the twitter handle for TweetMeme, creators of the retweet button)  I happen to use the Sharebar plugin on my site, and it includes a Retweet button.

   BTW, please retweet this post.

10. Use Twitter Lists:

    Follow people whose opinions you find interesting.

    Re-tweet their work.

    Add value to them, when you can, by answering their questions.

    Oh.  And add them to Twitter lists.

    Twitter lists are a great way to let your followers know who you are really paying attention to.
    They’re also a neat way to organize the people you’re following. Some people use them every time they go to a networking event, for example.  They’ll create a twitter list just for the folks they met at that event.  It can facilitate several ongoing conversations with different groups of friends and colleagues.  Which is pretty nice for long-term relationship-building.

11. Monitor the conversation.

    You can use Twitter Search or Google Alerts to search the Tweetstream for particular phrases.

    That then allows you to go in and surgically respond to individuals across the world who are talking about your area of interest! Neat, isn’t it?

12. Filter who you follow:

    Your follower-building strategy could be one of many.  You may choose to follow lots of folks, because reciprocal following is quite common on Twitter.  If you do so, you won’t be able to pay attention to ALL of their tweets.  So you’ll need a way to filter most of it out.

    Tools like TweetDeck allow you to only really listen to a limited number of the people you follow.
    Without having to drop everyone else from your “following” number.
    

Bonus: Reputation Management:

Measure your reputation by how many Twitter Lists you appear on (not by how many followers you have).
People add you to one of their Twitter Lists, to publicly denote that you’re someone they really want to pay attention to.

You can see that @ShaeBynes is on 70 different lists… indicating a lot of relationships and respect for her Twitter presence.  Coolness.

It’s worth re-iterating – Twitter is most useful when used for relationship-building.  Traffic can be an added benefit, but I’ve learned first-hand that going in with the mindset of generating a lot of traffic for your site is not only ineffective, but can contradict the personal brand you’re working so hard to build.

How are you using Twitter?

What other suggestions can you share on building your personal brand, and building relationships, using Twitter?

Comment below?