This post has grown from a seed planted in a Twitter conversation yesterday. In it I asked whether people have success running more than one Twitter account simultaneously.
I’m interested because I feel like I’m failing my ‘professional’ ID. The responses I got told me that, on the whole, we all prefer to meet the whole person, rather than a slice of a person. So, for a little while I redirected my blog link to my personal Twitter ID.
Then I hesitated. I remembered the fact that I am prolific on my personal ID, as opposed to occasional on my professional. I remembered that the people I like to tweet with wouldn’t necessarily want to read about the professional me, or be interested in the tweets I normally reserve for that account. I remembered that I often have a glass of wine on a Friday night, partake in the Twitter equivalent of a pub quiz and tweet random nonsense for a couple of hours.
And I thought “What would that do for my professional image?”.
So, for the time being I’ve redirected my blog link back to my professional ID, but I’m still not happy.
Part of what I do is advise on Social Media use and for me the main element is to be authentic. Twitter is not an obvious sales tool, but used well it is a great way to build relationships and it’s something that I’ve done very successfully (and without agenda) on my personal ID. To attempt to do the same with my professional will take an investment of time and energy and, frankly, I’ve got work to do.
What’s your take? Are you authentic? Do you use multiple IDs successfully or are you more ‘what you see is what you get’?
