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Here’s the question: Should you have your whole team tweet from the one account representing your brand? Or should you keep it to one person?
I’d say one person. Here’s my argument:
- Customers don’t know who they’re talking to. While you could use initials at the end of each tweet, it can still be very confusing for followers.
- Takes away from the personal touch. It feels a lot more personal when there’s a single name in the bio. You’re not talking to a team, you’re talking to a person.
- Repetition. If you have a good communication strategy in place, this won’t be a problem. If you don’t, you might have three people all answering one reply from a user with the same thing or sharing the same article.
- Inconsistent messages. If multiple people are posting on a single account, they may post inconsistent thoughts or information. It’s confusing, and it can result in a loss of trust.
- Lost opportunity to tap into different communities. If every employee that wants to participate in social media has their own account, the brand can tap into a larger audience in different niches, based on the employees’ following.
One situation where it would be alright to have multiple people tweeting from a single account is if it’s a customer service account. It’s important to have multiple people managing it at different times so that you can provide answers promptly. That is, as long as you have a communication system in place to prevent the issues stated above.
In general, if you’re using twitter to interact, I say keep it to one person representing each account. Keep it personal.
The debate is open. Do you think I’m wrong?
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Comments
10.21.09
While I agree with you on many of your points, in some companies - it's just not possible. For example, my client @RAsushi has over 22 locations nation-wide - yet only one Twitter account for them all, that we all share the login information to. There is no way I would know what is going on with RA Sushi in South Miami. See what I mean?
I think that's why there have been a lot of breakout Twitter apps recently (like Cotweet, for example) that enable many users to handle one account. In fact, I think that if many people plan to handle one account, using a secondary application is crucial to its existence.
In any case, you raise a good point that Twitter users should be aware of.
B
10.21.09
In general, I believe it's best practice to be transparent (we hear that all the time) with one person tweeting from let's say, a business account. However, I know companies that will outline the two people who interchangeably use the Twitter account. First, they let everyone know WHO is maintaining it and they also align their message. This is still personal.
Another counter point is that a lot of support type / service companies will use Twitter as their customer support channel. They often need someone available to tweet or answer a tweet and if that one person running the account isn't around, why shouldn't someone step in to answer a relevant question? Personality on Twitter and even your blog are important, but when the Twitter accountee's signify who is running the account (and that maybe multiple people might be, depending on) then I at least see the truth and understand the situation.
10.22.09
Bridget: I think it's a great opportunity for RA sushi to create accounts for each location so that you can target the audiences that are specific to those restaurants. One central account could be created too with more of a customer service function. Cotweet is definitely on the right track, but still...people will be confused/won't understand the significance of adding DS to the end of my tweets.
Grace: Thanks for your thoughts. Right after the 5 points I wrote "One situation where it would be alright to have multiple people tweeting from a single account is if it’s a customer service account." and this was discussed further in the comments of my original post. So, I agree, for support type functionality, it is necessary and expected to have multiple people maintaining the account.
True, two people could work. It would be better than three people using one account. I still think not as good as one person maintaining one account. Just my take (=
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