Multiple Social Media Identities: How Many Accounts Do You Need on Twitter?
This blog post is part of the Social Media for Small Businesses series
We’ve been so busy at Kiwano Marketing that sometimes it’s hard to find the time to keep up with the blog. Your comments, questions, and ideas never fail to motivate me into action – thanks, guys, for continuing to take the time and tell us what you think. Here’s the continuation of a series that has sparked considerable feedback. In this instalment of Social Media for Small Businesses, I will be discussing the pros and cons of having separate twitter accounts for your company and personal use.
Recently, Lora of Urban Eden Design asked me a question about multiple twitter accounts. She wanted to know my thoughts on whether it was a good idea to have separate twitter accounts for personal and work use. Under her sole twitter account, @UrbanEdenDesign, Lora had been having some great interactions with her followers, but was concerned that they weren’t really ‘business related.’ Was there a proper ‘twitter etiquette’ on this? Should she create a new account for personal use and maintain them both?
The question of multiple twitter accounts is one that small businesses may have to deal with sooner or later, so I thought it would be beneficial to throw open my thoughts on this matter. How people interact on twitter is still a developing topic, to the point where trying to pin down what is ‘proper’ can lead to a multitude of contradicting opinions. Given how much I learn about social media on a daily basis, I can only offer my personal opinion on when, and if, it’s a good idea to have more than one account.
When Kiwano first created its own dedicated account @kiwano to coincide with the launch of our website, I thought we had made a mistake. My own twitter account was well-established, as I had been tweeting for over a year, and it was hard work to maintain both at the same time. Since then, I’ve become more swayed by the advantages of having a proper business feed, but I would still advise you to think carefully before going down the same path. After all, we’ve got businesses to run. How much tweeting is too much?
Kiwano Tip #1: Do It Well
Whether you anticipate to have one, two, or more (my friend Hilary over at Granville Magazine maintains at least three feeds simultaneously; I am all astonishment at her multitasking talent), make sure the bottom line is the same – content before quantity. Before splitting your online presence, have a critical look at your existing feed. Are you happy with way you’re interacting with your followers? Do you publish a happy mix of different tweets – business, personal, information-sharing? Are you ready to do the same for another account?
For individual entrepreneurs and freelancers, the answer is simple: stick with one. Because twitter is (happily) such a flexible and informal forum, you can easily mix the business with the personal. Your personality usually works in harmony with representing your image and building trust in your brand.
Small businesses that maintain a blog, have frequent PR releases, or require a more professional image, may have success with creating a second account. The @kiwano feed is primarily dedicated for notifying our followers of Kiwano’s blog posts, news and sharing green articles and resources. Some ‘cross-pollenization’ of content between the two accounts, I believe, is acceptable as long as it’s selective. It can work better for you to tailor your tweets for each account or, simply retweet the ‘official’ company line to your personal one. Most importantly, make sure the content you publish on both accounts is valuable and useful knowledge for your audience.
Kiwano Tip #2: Organization is Key
With two pools of different followers from your accounts, how do you keep up with all of that traffic? Thankfully, you don’t need to keep logging in and out of your separate accounts using the web interface. Popular desktop applications like The TweetDeck have introduced support for multiple accounts, and you can easily implement different groups of followers. There are also options for tweeting to more than one account at the same time (although I would still advise you to tailor your message differently). I have yet to find a solid tool for the iPhone or Blackberry which specifically provides multiple account support – please leave me a comment below if you have one to suggest.
Kiwano Tip #3: Professional ‘Etiquette’ Tweeting
My friend Lora’s question was tied to her concern about whether it was appropriate to start conversations to her followers in areas that weren’t specifically linked to her business. My position is that twitter is an informal medium, and exchanges that are not related to work are a natural part of getting to know your followers. If the conversation turned into a long one, there is always the option of moving to direct messages or – better yet – email. There’s only so much business you can accomplish in those 140 characters.
Agreed completely.
The risk of NOT having a business account and relying on the personal relationships of employees (if it’s not the biz owner tweeting) is that if that person leaves the company, there goes your Twitter following.
That being said, it’s also important to have a personal tone to the corporate account. I maintain our company Twitter account (http://www.twitter.com/mediamiser) but identify myself as the person behind it (and link to my personal Twitter account, which is well established) and while I do post links to our content, I also provide other useful information and converse with our followers so it’s not just a corporate broadcast channel.
My 2 cents about it! Thanks for the post
Thanks for the post. That’s some very valuable advice which would make the article an interesting read for anyone with a twitter account.
I had been wondering about this recently – how do businesses deal with multiple twitter accounts. Although I am at least a couple of years away from starting my own business (I have not even graduated from university yet!), I am curious on the topic of online marketing.
My main concern lies with the ownership of the twitter business account. With medium and big businesses, there can be a separate Marketing department, so it becomes easy to keep the twitter account within the organisation. On the other hand, in a small business you shoulder a lot more responsibility, and online marketing becomes just one of the many things you have to do. That’s why it is so much easier to associate your personal twitter account with your business. However, your small business could change ownership. Lets say that after some time you find a very attractive and irresistible job offer. Someone agrees to buy your small business, but there is a problem – how are all of your previous followers going to respond to this change? Should the new owner be the one to worry about this, or is it just good practice to ensure that everything is properly passed onto the new owner?
–Andrey B.
@Kelly Rusk & @Andrey Bozhkov
Hey guys, you’ve both raised some very pertinent questions about twitter account ownership. When I wrote the blog post above, I was thinking primarily of small businesses and entrepreneurs. But you’re right, Andrey, even a small business can change hands. Having enthusiastic twitter supporters in your company is one thing, but how do you ensure their content stays with you after they leave the company?
Scenario one, which Kelly mentioned, is that the company is big enough to have its own corporate account and main person (or persons) responsible for the tweets. What she’s doing – maintaining two separate accounts – allows for a clear transition later on. By the way, Kelly, way to go on making sure your followers know that there is a real person behind the account; I wish more companies would take this route.
Scenario two, which is what you brought up, Andrey, is if a small business only has a single account and changes hands. I think it’s good practice to ensure everything is passed on, but perhaps it’s more complicated than that. What about direct messages or interactions not solely related to work? I can see some privacy risks depending on how the previous owner used his or her account. Perhaps in this case, it’s better to switch the name (if it was a corporate name), inform your followers of the switch, and direct them to the new twitter account for the company. People will appreciate honesty, and as an added bonus, you get to hold onto your business contacts.
Just fleshing ideas out on virtual paper here, and would be curious to know what you guys think. Thanks for taking the time to comment!
Thanks!!
Ok. So I’ve actually been through Scenario 2 (pre-twitter days though)
I worked for a small business that was acquired by a slightly larger business. While we didn’t have a Twitter account, we did have a permission-based email newsletter and a blog that we had to transition.
I felt that permissions and transparency were important, so rather than just moving everyone over to the new ‘brand’ we asked newsletter and blog subscribers to re-subscribe, it was definitely the right move, but we lost a lot of numbers.
For the newsletter we went from around 1,800 to probably 300. The new company was very different from the previous, so I think it was untargeted to a lot of our previous subscribers, which is why the numbers were so low. Unfortunate, but still better for business.
I would definitely go the same route if it were to happen again. Twitter is a little different–but I think in that case you’d get more followers to keep following you, as there’s no exchange in personal info.
Hey Kelly, hey Cecilia,
Until now, I had not considered privacy an issue. Back in May, I attended a talk by two recent graduates from my university. They had started a business on their own and said that when you run a business like that, everything you do starts revolving around your work – the business becomes you, so to say. Even then, it is probably better to keep a separate Twitter account and keep in mind the three tips in the post.
Thanks for your responses! I’m starting to form a clearer and more complete picture about multiple Twitter accounts.
-Andrey B
@Kelly Rusk thanks for sharing. It’s one thing to talk about social media for small businesses, but another to find concrete examples of how businesses actually cope with privacy and ownership changes. I think the decision to notify, instead of automatically send out, to the new newsletter & blog was a good one; especially if your intended audience has changed, it really makes no sense in keeping the emails simply for the sake of padding your subscriber numbers.
@Andrey Bozhkov thanks for reading and making such great comments. Really keeps us on our toes.
Hope you’ll continue to contribute to our future blog posts on this subject.
I really have enjoyed reading your post – very informative and useful information without a bunch of BS!
I’ll be sure to give this URL to some friends
Thanks Again