I'm Nicole and I live in DC. I'm a writer, knitter, cat lady, social media lover, nonprofit worker, and beer and food enthusiast. Want to know a little more about me? 
Hi there. If you’re familiar with my old blog, welcome to my new home! I’m no longer unemployd and can afford a dictionary now, so I decided to move on over to a different blog name. Additionally, I am now tweeting at @nicoleindc.
This new blog will be dedicated to things I find interesting about social media, nonprofits, and pop culture at their various intersections. I don’t think of myself as an expert, but a highly educated beginner starting the next phase of my career by building a social media presence for a nonprofit. I will detail my triumphs and failures and… some more failures probably.
If you’ve never read anything I’ve ever written before in my entire life, welcome. I appreciate any/all feedback from readers, friends, family, haters, etc.
Filed under: The Internet | Tags: Nonprofits, online campaigns, personality, twitter
The best lesson I’ve learned in life is to insert your personality into everything you do. I got laid off from my former job at the beginning of April and immediately began applying for jobs and internships. After sending out dozens of resumes and cover letters without any responses, I applied to be a strategy intern at Big Duck.
Shortly after starting at Big Duck, I quickly realized I needed to do my own branding if I wanted to get a job. I previously maintained only a sparse, unsearchable Facebook profile and a blog (this one) I updated irregularly. By injecting a little of my own personality into my public postings, I realized I could encourage prospective employers to get to know me before I even walked in the door.
I made sure to invest only in platforms that I would update regularly, would have a wide audience, and could use to cross-promote each other. Then, I toyed with a few themes for my online presence with the top two being “humor” and “job resource” and I combined the two. I decided to maintain just a blog and a Twitter account and remove any non-job related statuses on my Facebook.
Other key aspects to building my online personality and brand were keeping consistent usernames across all platforms and using my full, real name in profiles. If an employer were to do a google search of my name, they’d immediately find my LinkedIn profile, blog posts, and Twitter. Without keeping consistency across all sites, it could be difficult for them to tie the LinkedIn to the blog to the Twitter.
Next, I focused on content. So many people use social media to post their gripes and annoyances, but that just tarnishes your personality on and offline. Additionally, posting for the sake of posting doesn’t help your cause either. For example, whether you’re building a personal campaign or one for your organization, would you want a follower to know that you are fighting with your parents or you called someone a bad name because they upset you in line at the Gap?
No. You wouldn’t.
I made sure to post mostly about the trials and tribulations of the job hunt, retweeting tips from and communicating with career experts, and funny things that pop into my head. I may veer off this path every now and then, but I always make sure to never post something I wouldn’t say to a potential employer in a first or second meeting.
My short-term career goal is to build online campaigns for nonprofits. By building my own personality and brand across multiple platforms, I effectively built a campaign that I can promote and use as an example to potential employers.
Last Friday, I had an interview at a nonprofit looking for an online communications assistant. While I’m not sure yet if I’ve gotten the job, I know my online personality made a positive impact on my interviewer. She had my blog and articles I wrote in college up on her computer screen when I walked into her office. Staff members had shared my Twitter and they recognized my name when I began following them. Knowing she liked my online personality gave me the confidence to help sell my efforts as a legitimate campaign that gave me experience to help her organization.
Whether you’re looking for a job or just partaking in social media for the fun of it, make sure to inject your personality into everything you do. The results are only limited by what you do – and how strategic you are – with these emerging platforms.
Note to readers: I apologize in advance for any twoveruse of twitterfied twords that might occur.
In my few weeks on Twitter, I’ve noticed there are a lot of different uses for Twitter depending on who you are. There are the people who use it simply to be twopular by following trending topics and attempting to talk to celebrities. There are those post every single thought running through their head. There are those who use it for networking personally or professionally. And there are those who don’t have a purpose on Twitter and kind of
In my experience, there are two groups who seem to use Twitter the best: nonprofits and comedians. I know this might be a stretch, but I’m going to try to make the connection 
The best tweeps I’ve come across truly engage their audiences. Several of the nonprofits I follow tweet regularly about their cause, but don’t overdo it. They use Twitter not just as a promotional tool, but also as a communications tool to talk to other nonprofits and thought leaders. The twommunity they’ve formed is strong and growing.
Comedians do this incredibly well, too (my favorite is @mindykaling). Although I choose not to follow celebrities on Twitter, they provide some of the best content (I try to stay away from their tweets because, otherwise, I’d read nothing else).
Both groups get that you need to post regularly to keep your followers. Most nonprofits or nonprofit professionals I follow tweet a few times a day (at least a few times a week) so I keep them in the back of my mind. The more they post, the more twonnected I feel to their cause. Celebrities, of course, have a leg up in this category because… well… they’re celebrities. They often don’t even need to tweet in order to retain followers.
Additionally, they use Twitter as a tool to further their goals. Nonprofits have built a community in which everyone has their own expertise and is ready and willing to share their knowledge with others in the nonprofit sector. If they have a question about how to build a subscriber list, they can post it to twitter and answers instantaneously.
The best celebritweeps are those that don’t write about what club they’re going to or being in the record studio… they’re the ones that write about their daily lives. They are able to communicate about their work (when we’re most familiar with their end-result) and make it relatable to normal people. Musings about daily life that we come across as well make them more relatable and more popular in the twitterverse and IRL (had to throw that in there).
The absolute best thing about Twitter is that it allows you to become whatever you want to be. More than anyone else, these two groups seem to get it.
