How many Twitter accounts do you have? I have three. Like most people I started with a single account for my own personal use. That’s the one that’s linked at the end of this article and it’s still my major one. But about a year ago, one of my clients asked me to create and manage a Twitter account for him, and that’s where some of my challenges started.
Finding Stuff To Tweet About
With my own Twitter account it was never a problem to find stuff to tweet about. I’m reasonably active on the site, read a lot of blogs in my field and other areas of interest and have a core group of interesting people to follow. When it came to tweeting for my clients, I had to start from scratch. While I was interested in the topic of travel, I wasn’t as plugged into it as I was into the writing field. To address this, I:
- subscribed to a Google Pack on travel to see which blogs I found interesting. Over the weeks, I gradually deleted those that didn’t appeal.
- Looked at lists of the top travel blogs to find blogs I could follow
- Used Twitter search and other search tools to find people who were posting about travel related keywords
- Found travel bloggers through JustTweetIt
- Subscribed to press updates in the field so I could keep on top of travel news
Updating The Account
Once I had a second Twitter account, I also faced the issue of how to update it easily while still managing my original Twitter account. Logging in and out of each account was quite unsatisfactory, so I went through a range of tools designed to allow you to manage multiple Twitter accounts. Mashable’s got a great list of applications for managing multiple Twitter accounts. Here are some of the web apps I have tried.
- Tweetlater (now SocialOomph) – this worked well, allowing multiple account management, keyword tracking, scheduled tweets and more
- Seesmic Web – This app made it really easy to manage multiple accounts, but did not include scheduling
- Brizzly – though perhaps not the best for business (no analytics and no scheduling), Brizzly does allow draft tweets and has a killer feature in letting you temporarily mute people who are tweeting on topics that don’t interest you.
- Hootsuite – perhaps the best of the lot, Hootsuite allows multicolumn view, scheduling tweets and, most importantly for business, URL tracking and analytics via its ow.ly system
A key function of any useful Twitter web client is the ability to segment your followers into groups. The business account I run has 50 per cent more followers than my personal account, which makes it a challenge to engage with everyone. Grouping makes it easier to keep up with the people you are most connected to.
Being Someone Else
The most challenging part of running a Twitter account for a client is being someone else. I’ve always found that being myself is the best way to engage blog readers and microblog followers, but microblogging for a client forces me to tweet about what they would consider important. I am always conscious that I am representing someone else. I am still myself, but an edited version of myself, as I focus on my client’s priorities rather than my own. What challenges have you found when blogging for business?
I think you must always be yourself. Even on Twitter. People like individuality, not only a unique content and millions of followers. I use twitter for my own and i like it.
I am always myself, Shmel, but I don't talk about the same things, so I censor myself a little. I am still me though
yes Shmel , i appreciate what you have commented , still post is really good !!
Since twitter is not familiar in my country, i only have one account