Developing a Digital Strategy 011 – Practicalities, tweeting from multiple accounts
Tweeting from different twitter accounts is a complex business, not least because it can easy to post a tweet from the wrong account. Here’s how I do it:
My main ‘me’ account is @dreamingspires (focussed on health, publishing and social media in the main), and I have a neuroscience twitter account of @bodyinmind which is focussed on… neuroscience. Sometimes health and neuroscience overlap and I want to tweet from both accounts.
It would be regarded as spam if I posted the same tweets from both accounts if you are following both in your twitter stream, but if you are following only @dreamingspires you would expect me to tweet the major neuroscience news as well. What to do?
I put the question out to a medical twitterer @DrVes who manages multiple accounts very well [read tweets bottom up]
In a nutshell different topics can use different accounts, and sometimes you will post from both BUT there is a fine line between occasional duplicate posts and SPAM.
One person who manages this well in the social media sphere: @thewordpressguy (solving the world’s ills of wordpress questions) is also @thelatteguy (organising Sydney twitter coffee mornings) – a good call to separate them as they are different subjects, even though a lot of people who need wordpress advice also are at coffee mornings.
Practicalities to avoid the mistake of answering someone from the wrong account as I have done here
If you do use Tweetdeck be careful of its eversonothelpful new feature of selecting the account you tweet from depending on which column you reply from.
Tracking replies
Tweetdeck won’t register all the replies from different accounts unless I setup several separate columns which my screen isn’t big enough to do – so I use echophon for @bodyinmind to see if there has been any replies, and tweetdeck or seeismic as my mainstay (see previous post on how to use these).
I am going to start using Brizzly more – it is a reader that works with Twitter and facebook and has a nice clear interface
Peoplebrowsr which has a lot of functionality and really does have everything at your fingertips, but it is a fiddly application on a smaller screen.
Whatever you decide to use please note that different accounts are still ’personal’ – in the sense they aren’t just simply information streams – and sometimes it can feel a bit like trying to be part of 2 different busy conversations at the same time. You need to be consistent, even if you only post once or twice a day.
Conclusion
Tweeting from multiple accounts is good when:
- you have different subject areas
- different audiences
- different blogs that you are using the twitter info from
- or need an alterego to vent from!
Use one main application like Tweetdeck for all your accounts and an additional one like brizzly or echophon that you can quickly check replies that may not appear on tweetdeck.
Comments? Helpful hints?
Well this is a humbling post, thanks for the mention Heidi. I have found it so much easier to manage my twitter life with multiple accounts. My @thewordpressguy tweets feed onto my website and show tips and advice without to much banter going on. Whereas my @thelatteguy account is all about banter and conversation which I can freely do with that type of account.
Another thing I did when I split my twitter personality was to unfollow all of the people I had reciprocal followed but never made contact with. Wow did my twitter stream clean up from a polluted looking mess to a clean flow with great tweets from people I actually connect with regularly. But that’s another post topic for you I guess.
all the best
@thewordpressguy
@thelatteguy
[Reply]
Heidi Allen Reply:
January 19th, 2010 at 11:52 am
Thanks Tony, having a twitter stream with a focus really helps to get the most out of twitter – I like what you say about having different followers in different streams. Makes sense.
[Reply]
Hi there Heidi,
Nice article. I use http://HootSuite.com to track 8 twitter accounts daily, and it’s never sent a tweet from the wrong account. On the other hand, I may have used the wrong personality, but it wasn’t the software’s fault
Hootsuite’s great – if you are writing a new tweet, no FROM NAME/Twitter Name is selected until you manually click the Twitter Account name you wish to send from.
If you’re replying or retweeting, the FROM NAME/Twitter name is already selected.
Hootsuite is browser-based and doesn’t depend on Adobe Air like many other solutions … and Adobe Air is known to be very memory-hungry.
I’m sure others have their favourites, just wanted to let you know which one I’ve settled on and which works great for me. Plus it’s easy to see replies, sent tweets, direct msgs etc for each account.
Cheers!
Teena Hughes
http://BuildAWebsiteTonight.com
http://twitter.com/build_website
[Reply]
Heidi Allen Reply:
January 19th, 2010 at 11:57 am
Hi Teena! – I have used Hootsuite and found it very user friendly, however the bar it has along the top does put some people off as it doesn’t give the original url (albeit shortened). That said it’s a great application. You’re right about a browser based solution being less hungry too which can have a big impact if you’re doing a lot of tweeting (managing 8 twitter accounts must take some doing!). The mix up for me is exactly when I reply or retweet because the account is then already selected from which I’m going to reply and sometimes it’s the wrong one. but that’s just practice as well as paying attention I guess!
[Reply]
Thanks for writing back Heidi. You’re right, different applications suit different people and their needs, and there are certainly plenty of solutions available these days. It’s great to read about and see what other are using, which helps us all make informed choices. Your article certainly does that – thanks!
I’m not too happy about the bar on website pages either, I’m in the habit of closing it whenever I see it now
Tony’s tips on diff twitter accounts is exactly what I’ve done for the different projects I work on, and works like a charm.
PS – I’m attending my first Inner West Sydney Coffee Morning in Leichhardt tomorrow, and looking forward to it!
Keep up the great tips!
Cheers
Teena Hughes
http://BuildAWebsiteTonight.com
http://twitter.com/build_website
[Reply]
This is a very timely post Heidi – I can relate as you would remember from those tweets between yourself, @neerav and me last week, I’ve been experimenting with multiple twitter accounts for about 2 weeks now.
As an experiment I have been cross-posting some tweets to multiple accounts where I see relevancy, want to spread the information further, or let my core audience know about the other accounts. This can be at the expense of the audience following my main account @hollingsworth and the new ones, which bothers me but many are friends and hence more forgiving. I haven’t decided if it’s the right direction for me yet. Fortunately I haven’t seen a massive outcry from the community, although some people have helpfully reminded me of the duplicate tweets. For example, this one from @tariqh this morning:
@hollingsworth btw what tweets are you not going to put on your main account that your putting on @AskTonyIT ? In seeing a fair bit of dups?
See http://twitpic.com/yqn1q
Earlier, @KristinaThorpe:
@hollingsworth You’ve got an echo!
See http://twitpic.com/yqn28
I also manage several corporate accounts in the IBM world so, like Teena above, am finding Hootsuite invaluable (about to trial PeopleBrowsr too) – to your point on TweetDeck and its “eversonothelpful new feature of selecting the account you tweet from depending on which column you reply from” this is well-managed by Hootsuite which is context-sensitive. You are spot on again Heidi, the bugbear I have with Hootsuite is its proprietary URL-shortener ow.ly which forces you to click twice to uncover the true-URL and what’s worse, inserts their banner in your browser. However it is a free-service and that’s is their business model. I prefer is.gd and tend to use that, or bit.ly for its analytics capabilities.
Tony C who comments above has done what I still haven’t done but am considering: he renamed his prior account and unfollowed some people, then continued on as @thewordpressguy – a good strategy which is working for him. I have to figure out if I should do that too – and consolidate, or not. I am going to blog further on this.
Cheers,
Tony Hollingsworth
[Reply]
Heidi Allen Reply:
January 19th, 2010 at 1:52 pm
Thanks guys — feel like I’m learning loads from the comments – especially as you are experienced multi-account-tweeters (is that a new word now?) The fact that hootsuite is context specific in its replies is interesting.
[Reply]
By context sensitive of course I am simply echoing Teena’s comment: Hootsuite just selects the account based on the column you reply from, which sounds like what you’re saying TweetDeck is doing, but the correct way? Not a big fan of Adobe Air apps – very heavy/bloated, agree with Teena. I also adopt this approach on mobile, by the way – Tweete is a great app, now in Beta with List support. See http://beta.tweete.net
Cheers
Tony Hollingsworth
[Reply]
Great post Heidi, thanks! Very timely as I am just working out which software to use to manage my streams. My case of managing content is like yours, different audiences so pretty straight forward. What I am not a fan of are people who retweet their own tweets from a different account (one account usually doesn’t have a pic of them) to build their stats.
Thanks for the comments too, they all help!
[Reply]