Two Twitter Birds

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Two Twitter Birds

This post is is my Twelve Days of Christmas series. See all of my festive gifts.

[image error]On the second day of Christmas, I'm giving you two Twitter birds! Or at least my thoughts on why two Twitter accounts are better than one.

I often come across confusion about what authentic tweeting means. Just tweeting promotional messages is boring and won't get you many followers. Telling people what you had for breakfast is inane (do peope really do that? I suspect it is a mythical use of Twitter put about by people who don't use it).

Where is the happy balance between personal and professional? Why not have separate accounts for each? Tweet useful tips, news and links in your niche topic area on a business account; and use a separate personal account for your random thoughts.

The important thing is to tweet appropriately, and to tweet content that the people who follow you want to read. If you're a mainstream news service – say, ITV News – your personal thoughts on Nigella Lawson are irrelevant to your followers – and embarrassing if you mix up your twitter accounts.

The great thing about Twitter is that you can have multiple accounts. And the New Twitter design allows for links in your profile description for the first time – both Twitter @usernames and standard web addresses. This means it is even easier to link between your Twitter accounts.

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If people are interested to find out more about the person behind the tweets, they can always click through to your personal account…

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…where they can also find links to your other business accounts.

I have half a dozen Twitter accounts, and most are of the 'useful news feed' variety. My personal account, however, is just me sharing my personal thoughts on current affairs, what I'm watching on TV, and indulging my interest in online wit, whimsy and wordgames. Great for keeping up with friends and followers, but it would drive my Publishing Talk community mad with the irrelevant inanity of it all. They want to know about publishing – not which tie David Dimbleby is wearing on #bbcqt.

If your business is intimately tied to you as a person, you may be able to use just the one account. Otherwise, keep them separate, and retweet between them where it seems appropriate.

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