I’m going into fanboy mode. Why? Because you can’t talk about being yourself without talking about people who are doing just that, being themselves.

Take Gary V for instance. Gary is a guy who will give it to you like he sees it. I was driving up to Social Fresh Nashville back in January while I listened to his book “Crush It“. Even it’s you’ve read the book, you should go out and get the audio book. Gary goes off script a million times (That’s the drinking game for the audio book, btw) and passionately shares his insights that are harder to convey within just the printed text. I loved one of his stories about driving 6 hours in horrible weather to deliver wine to prove his point to his employees as well as it being the right thing to do for his customer. That’s the type of person he is. And through every encounter, he portrays just that. Why? Because he’s being himself.

I’ve actually had this discussion with a friend of mine who I’m a huge fan of how she is using Twitter. Her name is Melanie and she actually runs the Twitter account for Taziki’s in Birmingham, Alabama. Despite the fact that she is tweeting for a company, she has found great ways to be herself through her tweets from @Tazikis_Bham A great example of this was shortly after she started tweeting for @Tazikis_Bham. A few local Tweeps decided to get together for lunch @VTBirmingham. Melanie, thru the @Tazikis_Bham account, helped coordinate the tweetup. Instead of excluding herself, she decided to include herself since she was genuinely interested in meeting her audience. Now, most people would view this as a travesty, a betrayal of her brand. But it didn’t turn out that way at all. Melanie showed that genuine interest in her followers and has built the @Tazikis_Bham account into a very interactive experience for customers and followers.

On Twitter, you’re followers are generally smart enough to know if you’re really being yourself or if you’re talking out of your ass. Case in point, I began following someone on Twitter who billed themselves as a “Social Media Expert” only to be greeted by a message just minutes later asking about how to organize a Tweetup. Needless to say, I’m not following this person anymore. Neither are a lot of other people, from the last time that I checked.

I also have to shout out to a good friend of mine who came to me and asked me just how he should be using Twitter. @JAAndrews is a lawyer in the Birmingham (AL) area. After he decided that he would become more active on Twitter, he consulted me on how I thought he should approach using the platform on a more regular basis. Since he’s chosen not to tweet about matters of law (rightly so), I suggested that he tweet about the things that matter the most to him. Looking at his last 30ish tweets, I’d say that his family, connecting with friends and entrepreneurs, and selling his house are what’s important to him at the moment.

If you haven’t had the chance, watch this video of Gary V speaking at SXSWi this year (2010):

I know I’ve already referenced it once already but I’m going to quote him again:

“We have ridiculously awesome BS detectors.”

And truer words haven’t been spoken. As a human, you are the best at doing one thing and one thing only: Being Yourself. And we, as humans, can sniff you out a mile away if you’re trying to be something you aren’t. So, next time you tweet, don’t worry about what others might say. Say what you mean to say and don’t make apologies for it. Make sure that you are being yourself. I promise, there’s at least one person out there (besides your mom) who will think you’re interesting. But that part is another post…