Welcome back to our weekly feature, Engaging Reads – a round up of the most useful and inspiring things we’ve stumbled across in the Twittersphere this week.

What does your Twitter bio say about you?

We love FastCompany.com. It mixes innovative business ideas with a sarcastic and comical undertone, so it’s always fun to read. A recent article offering tips on how to write the perfect Twitter bio is a tongue in cheek look at some less-than-authentic personal statements that can quickly get you ‘unfollowed’. Using quotes and the word ‘ninja’ were identified as the biggest no-no’s but there’s also some sound advice about how to effectively position yourself in your marketplace, whether you are job hunting or networking.

Advertising: Do consumers still ‘buy’ it?

This week, Mashable.com shared a new infographic illustrating changing perceptions of advertising. It cleverly depicts stats on declining trust in traditional advertising and increasing reliance on third party endorsement online.

Advertising infographic

Online personal branding training: Help your CEO to inspire

Last week’s issue of our industry trade magazine PR Week included a feature on how PR professionals can help the leaders they counsel communicate more effectively based on recent leadership research. The advice was largely based on ‘traditional’ PR support for leaders with a public profile. But social media offers any leader the opportunity to gain influence through their online profiles and most of the tips in the article can be applied to online personal branding of leaders. If anything, the ability to listen, tell stories, paint the future and develop a point of view are more important – and more possible – than ever in the digital world. We as comms professionals should be focusing just as heavily on training our CEOs to be masters of social media as masters of public appearances. Let’s face it, the risks of messing up online are even more catastrophic – but the benefits of gaining online influence are also much greater!