SocialFishing linked this weekend to a pretty cool slide show on “personal vs. professional social media identities” in the world of nonprofit associations. It’s a rather fascinating issue that likely extends beyond our little insular world of associations into the entire corporate landscape. Just what is the correct way to engage with your membership or consumer base? Has the line between the corporate and the personal message been forever blurred in the interests of transparency and authenticity? Here’s my experience.
I am an avid Twitterer, and my personal account (@GeekSoapBox) just surpassed 1,000 tweets and 500 followers (still humble aggregate totals, but a far cry for someone who’s used to a mere ten blog visits a day). I strive to be pithy, funny, honest, and as brutally personal as I can be. No subject or link is taboo, and I greatly enjoy re-tweeting or replying to friends and followers.
At the same time, I am also the corporate Twitterer for my association (@4As). I am the only person in the company with access to the account, so the voice is completely mine (I insisted upon it when taking on the responsibility). Still, when browsing this account, it reads as a completely different person. Most of the content is merely broadcast messaging promoting the latest initiative, event, or Web posting, with an occasional re-tweet of another organization staffer thrown in. During conferences, I also use this account to do the now-prolific-across-the-Internets regurgitation of all general session speaker insights.
Personally, I find managing this account a tad tedious, but also clearly see it’s value. With nearly 2,000 followers, I’m able to use this outlet to reach as many or more members and non-members every day than via our flagship Web site or even many e-mail blasts. In fact, Twitter is now the top referrer of traffic to our Web site outside of Google. Twitter is now an essential element of our overall marketing mix.
But what about personal matters? On occasion, I have accidentally tweeted a thought @4As that I intended for @GeekSoapBox, most infamously one where a new hire at our office talked about how she had been doing Web design since 8th Grade and I remarked that there *was* no Internet when I was in 8th Grade! It was cute, a little humorous, and easily created the most reaction via direct and public messages I had ever received. Nearly a dozen individuals retweeted or told me otherwise that they loved the comment and thought it really personalized a previously dry account, and to keep it up. This is completely consistent with Twitter best practices, and subsequently I would have to say that 95% of the people I’ve “met” on Twitter have been nothing short of really cool, nice, and decent human beings with lots of interesting ideas to offer.
Personal thoughts are still a double-edged sword, though. Another time, a nonmember (we call them “prospects”) decided to “sass” the corporate account by direct messaging it on a Friday evening about how “our Web site sucks” and then complained all weekend publicly that nobody got back to him. I had read his message immediately, of course, but after careful consideration, I decided to let him steam a little over the weekend and then “sassed” him back Monday morning asking if it was OK to take a weekend off. I followed that dose of humor back with an immediate second message that I was always available to discuss his issues with our site, and he seemed to be cool with the whole thing. Crisis averted? I’ll spare the details, but I defintely received some internal flack for the episode. I strongly believe that *any* company should never display weakness in the face of criticism, and that we had nothing to hide. In fact, by showing a little chutzpah it seemed to actually impress this individual (after all, would you rather join a confident organization or a meek one?). Eventually, the issue faded away, but the sour taste left me questioning if I should close the corporate account entirely, or pass it along to someone else to handle.
What of my personal account? Well, I’ll never delete that one, and it is a clear and deliberate choice to keep it separate from the corporate version. On one hand, it allows me to keep it for all posterity, should I move on from my associations’ venerable halls one day…and on the other, it allows me the occasional discretion to “vent” in a diplomatic and indirect fashion about my job. That would probably be in bad form with the other account, right?
I guess there are no easy solutions out there for the newbie Twitterer. The dual account thing is a lot of effort, but it has definitely worked for me, and for my association. Just be sure that, when you hit that old “send Tweet” button in TweetDeck, you have the correct account selected. 
Thanks for the link love! The issue of how to balance personal and professional is definitely a tricky one. I personally think that over time, as more and more organizations embrace Twitter, there will be more people tweeting on behalf of their org which will solve the problem you describe – basically you can have someone responsible for maintaining an umbrella account under which individual staffers tweet with their own voices (@NASEtweets, the account for the National Association of Self Employed, a group I work with, is a great example of this). This also means that if individuals come and go you still have the collective voice.
Having a strong presence purely personally is another issue – I had the same thing, and then was lucky enough to morph it into a business. But any blogger has a personal brand that’s important to nurture. I guess only time will tell whether people figure out good ways to manage multiple accounts, and I think Twitter apps that help you do that will only get better and better. Another thing you can do is use one kind of dashboard (say Hootsuite) for the professional account(s) only, and something totally different (say Tweetdeck) for your personal. This is exactly the kind of thing that Twitter’s open platform allows, namely developers to find really useful tools to manage known issues, so I for one will be keeping a close eye on how these tools improve over time…
Thanks for the tweet and comment, Maddie!
I used to use the “dual dashboard” thing to manage my Twitter accounts (TweetDeck for my own because it ROCKS, and twhirl for the corporate one). Sadly, though, my PC was unable to keep up with the rigors of running those programs, Outlook, Sharepoint, and all the other stuff I use (darn that IT Department!). So now I’m *carefully* toggling back and forth on both in TD.
Glad you enjoyed the slideshow and thanks again, Maddie, for passing it on to the association community!