When marketing and selling to your Twitter followers, there are a lot of experts out there providing a tremendous amount of attention to copywriting and composing compelling messages .

However, even the most accomplished sales people will have trouble selling if their appearance doesn’t inspire confidence and trust.

The same principle applies to the Twitterverse. With malicious code transmission on the rise, we need to remove every obstacle to establish a working relationship with our Twitter followers.

Who Would You Introduce Yourself To

Now imagine this: You are attending a friend’s cocktail party and the people there are from every walk of life. Some people are in jeans. Others arrived more elegantly dressed. Still, others even brought a change of clothes.

You got students with backpacks, women with handbags, men with European shoulder bags, and they all seem to be having a good time.

Suddenly, a really big dude walks in wearing a Jason hockey mask and carrying a big dirty sack.

And he brought his Halloween buddy wearing a Micheal Meyers mask and carrying a big, bloody bag.

And then there is his friend wearing the Freddy Kruger mask and he has a big black garbage bag over his shoulder dripping… something out of it.

So what do you do? Walk up to these guys and say, “Yo buddy. My name is Bob. Here’s my card. Can we get together after the party? By the way, whatcha got in the bags? Let’s just reach in and see what’s happenin’ in there…”

Chances are when someone shows up at a party wearing a mask, carrying a sack, and the party is not a Halloween party, no one is going to walk up to this dude and try to shake his hand.

More than likely, somebody in the room is going to call the cops while 4 or 5 of the bigger people will keep this guy from getting in.

So Who Are You Inviting Into Your Twitter Home

We don’t just invite masked strangers into our homes or try to establish relationships with them, let alone checkout what they’ve got stuffed in their bags.

If we map the same sentiment over to the Twitterverse, then the owner of this account would probably have some trouble getting Twitter followers, establishing professional credibility, or getting his followers to click on his link.

The Twitter avatar looks like something from the original “Outer Limits” series – the black and white program with the really creepy monsters.

His account name, erased here, was something more descriptive of what he did, like “Make Money Now” or “Get Twitter Followers” instead of who he was.

And the link that he’s promoting is compressed by Bit.ly, so at first glance you really can’t see “what’s in his bag”.

I like using creativity to be different from everyone else. That’s the whole idea of marketing yourself and creating your brand.

At the end of the day, however, you need to remember that you are establishing relationships with people, which means you have to be a person.

The creepier you appear, the more incongruent you come across, the faster you will be lumped in the category of spammer, bot, or malware distributor.

So when you are importing a picture for your Twitter avatar, creating your account name, or writing your bio, ask yourself, “What kinds of people do I want to connect with and will they trust me with the persona I’m creating?”

Keep it real out there and watch what you click.