Since launching Depantsing The Clones, I’ve started a lot of things from scratch. One of those is a brand-spanking-new Twitter account.And I’m no Twitter expert. At least not yet.One of the things about Twitter that immediately struck me was how important a good profile description is. While reading tweets one day, I quickly noticed that I could group my reactions to other people’s descriptions into three categories.
- “Ehh…” (Didn’t grab me at all)
- “Now that’s just plain dumb.” (Sounds too silly to be of substance)
- “Wow. This (guy or gal) sounds interesting! I’m in!”
On that particular day I was using several services to find interesting people to follow. After just a few minutes of reading profile descriptions I began to see an overabundance of vagueness in many profiles. A few examples…“Serial entrepreneur” (You have several businesses? Tell me about one of them, please.)“Entrepreneur” (Just the word entrepreneur – not specifying what their business is.)“Business expert” (With no further detail.)“Guru” (I hate this one!)“Success expert” (?)There are a ton more that I could list. The problem is they’re all pretty vanilla and fail to attract attention because the descriptions are vague.But what do I know? I’m pretty new to Twitter, too.
Time to Call in the Pros
I learned long ago that when you want to get better at something, a smart place to start is by studying someone who is already successful at it. I’m not suggesting you mimic others – but you absolutely should find people who are masters at what you want to learn, take a cue from their experience, and employ some of their successful moves in your own unique way.Among the people I follow, I decided to look at the profiles of two who I know for a fact use Twitter efficiently and successfully.Those two people are Paul Castain and Ash Ambirge. If you don’t know who these people are, you should. Visit their sites, subscribe, read, absorb, repeat.At the time I wrote this post, Ash had over 6,000 followers and Paul had over 22,000.
Not too shabby.
I have followed these two long enough to know two things about them.
- They’re both incredibly smart people who know their stuff.
- Their marketing efforts are of the very best quality and efficiency.
Before I wax on forever, let me show you the profiles of Ash and Paul:
Ash is exactly what her profile claims. It’s specific, true, and describes what she does. The description on her Twitter account makes it very clear very quickly that her purpose is to help others use the internet to make a living. It’s also articulate, funny, and witty without crossing the corny line. 
Paul’s profile makes it obvious that he is a sales guru without him having to use that beat-down, over-used word. He clearly owns his own sales training and coaching business – and in his spare time keeps Whupass. I keep fish – but to each his own. You can tell in just three lines that he’s a witty guy and will be fun to read. Who wouldn’t want to hang with a Jedi? What did I learn from Ash and Paul’s Profiles?A good Twitter profile takes some thought, some planning, and is a lot like the elevator speech you probably learned about in sales training. It should be…
- short & to the point
- specific
- interesting
- a glimpse into your personality
Using the examples of these two and many others, I re-vamped my profile for Depantsing The Clones. I’m not posting it here because I want you to go read it and follow me. @RebootAuthenticI’m sneaky like that.But I do want your feedback and suggestions to make it better. So I’m counting on you to help me tweak it in the comments section.Take a second look at your profile description. Does it show the world that you’re someone worth following?