So if you’ve just completed our proofreading course, you need to set up a business-related account.
That means only using it for professional purposes. You will not be taken seriously if you use your Twitter account for personal news.
Your friends and family might think it is funny to read: ‘Just got in. Drunk again. Adrian dumped me. Life’s a bitch’.
But this would not do your reputation as a proofreader much good. People need to trust you have the correct proofreading course certification, and convincing editorial skills.
This means you should choose your username carefully.
It’s best to use your first and last names, with the word Proofreader, for example: GavinSmithProofreader
Common names are not always available. But you can use underscores, numbers and hyphens to give you more options.
If you are self-employed, you will need to decide whether you are going to tweet on behalf of your business – or yourself.
A company, or a business, is made up of several individuals, so you will have to decide whether you want your image to be ‘corporate’, or whether you want it to have a human face – ie, you!
Attaching a personality to the Twitter account may help you to gain trust, which is something that most users appreciate.
But make sure you don’t end up mixing personal with corporate! If you received Tweets from Coca Cola reading … ‘I think this is a great new drink’, you would wonder exactly who I is. The CEO? The marketing manager? Or who?
You may need different accounts for different aspects of your work, so you can communicate to your existing and potential readers in the appropriate language.
So – there’s more to a username than you may realise. You need to consider it carefully.
See our proofreading course