Your Twitter Plan

Daniel Scocco over at Daily Blog Tips published a post called ‘Should I use my personal name or my website name on Twitter?’ In the post he discusses whether there’s sense in having individual Twitter accounts for different web sites, or whether one Twitter account is the way to go.

I made a comment on his post and that’s prompted me to write about it here in more detail.

Daniel makes the comment that guys like Shoemoney may have multiple web sites, but one Twitter account. To me, that makes sense if you have related web sites all aimed at a similar audience. They follow you on Twitter and get value out of your tweets.

Other people may have different web sites on very different topics. People who follow them because they like their tweets about one topic may not necessarily enjoy your tweets on other topics.

And this is where your vision and goals are important.

If you’ve taken time to decide on your vision for your business, then decisions like having different Twitter accounts become a bit easier.

If you’re looking to build an online business that revolves around your personality and identity, then it makes sense to have a Twitter account that reinforces that. Shoemoney is a good example of that.

If you have different web sites that cater to different interests, then maybe having separate Twitter accounts makes sense. Darren Rowse is a good example, with his ProBlogger Twitter account, and his Digital Photography School account. Interestingly with Darren, he also has his TwiTips website, but doesn’t actively use a separate account for that one. Instead he has a message directing people to follow him via the ProBlogger account. He must feel that the two audiences have a lot in common.

By making your Twitter profiles more targetted and catering to specific niches, you make it easier to attract the right sort of follower – someone who is interested in your topic. If the majority of your tweets are valuable, you increase the likelihood of being re-tweeted, and exposed to a larger audience. This is because your followers are more likely to read your tweets, because they know they will be relevant.

Another good reason to consider separate accounts relates to building up lists. We all know that building up subscribers to our blogs is a good thing. Giving people multiple options to subscribe is helpful. My perception of Twitter is that there can be a fair degree of crossover – your Twitter followers are possibly more likely to also subscribe to your blog in some way. Regardless of this crossover, building a fan base in Twitter helps to get your message out to a wider range of people. If you ever plan on selling your blog, having a separate Twitter account with thousands of followers may also enhance the sale price you receive.

So, do you have a plan for your blog? Do you have a vision of how it could look? Does this vision help to guide your decisions?

Let me know what you think…..and please Re-Tweet this article if you enjoyed it!