I do a lot of private coaching. Someone asked me a great question today around personal branding and taking it to the next level.  The question?

“I keep hearing most of what I tweet should have nothing to do with my business.  How will I sell if I shouldn’t talk about my business most of the time?”

<long pause from me, silence on the phone>

“That’s the most absurd thing I have ever heard!”

Of course I had to explain myself more explicitly and provide a few more tactics for him to follow on twitter.  Here is the high level explanation I provided him in order to ensure he didn’t completely kill his personal brand.

Always Talk About Your Business

I’m about to give you the golden nugget when it comes to your business, your personal brand, and life in general. This is the man difference between people that are incredibly succesful, wealthy, and seem to have a horse shoe implanted somehwere inside there body.  Are you ready?

Focus Focus Focus

But what does this mean to Twitter?  It means you always need to be talking about your business or personal brand.  There is a lot of bad, horrible, insanely crazy, flat out wrong advice being given out there by people that have no background whatsoever in marketing, technology, or social media. Seriously, ask them for some social proof or resume to back up what they are saying before you take this advice to the bank!

I want to clear the air on this important topic because this is one of the tactics you need to follow on twitter that will separate you from the rest of the field that is simply playing games.  Just take a look at Mitch Joel’s twitter account, Chris Brogan, and other professionals that have leveraged twitter to grow their businesses to incredible levels. Let me give you an example.

Lets say for instance you are a Human Resource Consultant.  You want to take your consulting business to the next level.  We work together to come up with a clear goal: Become the number one Human Resource Consultant in Manitoba focused on employee retention.  Next we come up with a strategy: Leverage social media to communicate your Human Resource employee retention prowess.  Finally, we come up with some great tactics.  One of these tactics is to post a minimum of 20 updates to twitter a day. But what should we post on Twitter?

Be Real, Be Yourself, But Stay Focused

I have come up with a formula that has worked time and time again for clients.  It’s the 80/20/100 rule.  80% Direct Business, 20% Indirect Business, 100% Business, 100% Engagement. I will explain how this works in a future post, but basically what it means:

Always be tweeting about your business, and always be engaging with your customers.

Let me be incredibly clear:  Do not destroy your brand by spending most of your time tweeting about things that have nothing to do with your business.  Let me ask you a question: “Why do people follow you on twitter?”.  Seriously.  Pause this blog.  Pull over if your driving and ask yourself “Why do people follow me on twitter?”

They follow you because you provide value to them on a certain topic.  You may be a technology company focused on Microsoft technologies providing insights on industry trends, advice, and upcoming events around technology.  You may be a real estate agent providing information on great new homes going for sale, hot investment opportunities in real estate, or even tips on selling your home for the highest price possible.

Remember this is advice for business owners not for people that are on twitter for socializing and general fun.  If your on twitter for general fun and entertainment value and a new world party line, then by all means, don’t tweet about your business.

Makes sense! So you’re saying don’t be real?

Of course not!  Am I suggesting you stop having real conversations with people? Not at all. In fact I’m specifically telling you to have engaging conversations with people! Be real, but always focus on what you are trying to sell.  Your Business. Brand. Personal Brand.