Over dinner a few days ago, a friend and fellow Twit mentioned that an account she followed had changed its Twitter strategy and become really annoying.
She originally chose to follow them because they made interesting and useful announcements about local events so she knew everything they tweeted could be worth reading and possibly even diarising. The problems started when the account began posting personal updates too. Now there are announcements and twitpics that have nothing to do with local events and everything to do with some person she’s never met and isn’t really interested in.
I know in the past I’ve sent a few tweets from the @cheltsocmedcafe account when I should have reserved them for my personal account (during the election, for example). Luckily, someone stepped in and reminded me that I have different accounts for a reason!
If you’re concerned that your tweets are inappropriate for a personal, or a professional account then it may be worth opening up a whole new account to deal with it! By maintaining boundaries between your accounts you can avoid annoying a lot of followers. In the case of accounts like @cheltsocmedcafe where you want a mix of personal and ‘professional’ (or business related) tweets it can work too – just keep your overall purpose in mind!
Your objective should set the tone (and content) of your tweets.
Hmmm, this one’s left me a little bit confused. I worry that if my tweets are all work work work then they become tedious and akin to just shouting at followers with a fog horn ABOUT MY BUSINESS!
Maybe best to tweak your tweets with a non-business tweet every now and then and show the personality behind the tweet?
I know what you mean Rosie! I didn’t mean to imply that business accounts should simply be an announcement system – plenty of companies can benefit from interacting with their audience and injecting a little personality into their tweets.
What I meant was that people shouldn’t use their business account to start telling people every detail of their personal lives. I don’t want to know what the ‘company’ is having for dinner and I don’t need to know that their girlfriend just picked them up from the train station. People follow business accounts because they have an interest in the business. This doesn’t discount the person behind the business – it just means I’d rather hear about stuff the company is doing rather than the minutae of the individual’s life.