Guy Kawasaki on why you should tweet 70 times a day, and other social media branding tips

This post was co-authored by Sritam Patnaik on behalf of NUS Entrepreneurs’ Association (NUSEA).

A few of us were lucky enough to catch Guy Kawasaki at Stanford University recently for a short and informative session on the Art of Social Media.

Guy Kawasaki and Sritam (NCSV28)

(Left to right) Sre Vinod (NCSV29), Liew Ken Hua (NCSV29), Nguyen Cao Nhat Linh (NCSV29), Ken Lee (NCSV29)

For the uninitiated, Kawasaki is a Silicon Valley-based author, speaker, entrepreneur, and evangelist; he is also currently serving as the Chief Evangelist of Canva, a popular online graphic design tool. The 1 hour session was informative, humorous, and largely insightful. Here are some tips that Kawasaki shared with us on utilizing social media as both a business and branding tool, as well as the art of effective communication.

On photo editing and choosing profile pictures

Kawasaki kickstarted the entire session with a how-to on optimizing profile pictures on social media channels to appear more professional. He advocated the importance of having a proper profile picture for all your social networks. To illustrate his point, he gave a few bad examples and contrasted with an example of what should be done instead. To list a few:

• Your profile picture should comprise of mainly your face
• Asymmetry in the photo
• No use of backlighting
• Use the same photo for all channels

This is to project a consistent personal brand and image on all of your social media channels and to also allow people to search and identify you easily. This is especially so for some of us with very common names (i.e. David Lim for example) where different photos used for Facebook and LinkedIn would create confusion.

Although some may disagree, Kawasaki is largely coming from a professional standpoint and stresses the importance of consistency. This picture should also bring across feelings and sentiments that you want people to perceive. For example, a photo of you smiling would allow others to perceive you as friendly and inviting. Being dressed in a suit and tie would convey a serious connotation to that image.

From the perspective and use of cover photos, the same aforementioned principles apply. However, it is more common for cover photos to be used and told as narratives instead. Using his own cover photo as an example, Kawasaki explained that his intention is for others to perceive him as being warm, friendly, yet serious, and someone of great importance (referenced to his personal connection with Richard Branson).

Kawasaki’s social media cover photo

On pitches and presentations

On social media

On experimenting