Is Your Alter Ego Sabotaging Your Success?
“Good thing about twitter is people know who you are and can recommend you – everything you say and believe in is out there for them to see ” @Rishil
There is no getting away from it, we all love twitter. It allows us to engage with people who may never have spoken to us before, we can listen in to the conversations happening in social spheres that are not our own, and we can connect with people all over the world, with different interests and backgrounds, all from one interface. But what happens when you are not just one person online How do you bring all of the facets of your personality together.
It’s not an easy decision to make, and all the worse in that it’s a decision we generally make when we’re just starting out, and not one that’s easily changed once we have started to build contacts and a reputation. Even worse is when a company is involved, if you tweet as part of your company, and your identity is tied up with that, what happens then when you leave?
How many twitter accounts do I need anyway?
Of course this doesn’t just apply to twitter, but it is the easiest medium to demonstrate it in. It’s an age old question, and one that resulted in me being better known online as Yoshimi than I am as Sarah. Many moons ago when I first started on AOL chat rooms, I was known as SECsy (a name amazingl,y suggested by my mother, when I was only 14. SEC were my initials & the internet wasn’t exactly popular then so I don’t think either her or I considered the danger associated with such a name) Later it was changed to Sassy2306 (my birthday if you want to buy me a gift) and finally, when I started joining forums, I settled on Yoshimi. Slowly over time I stopped visiting the places where I had used other names and Yoshimi became me. Whether I was on my favourite Knitting community, or chatting about Rats, or the GTD system, suddenly I was Yoshimi everywhere I went.
By the time I joined twitter. Yoshimi was already taken, so I chose Yoshimiknits as a username, and opened a second account Freckle_red to use for SEO related tweeting. Unfortunately though I was already starting to become known in SEO as Yoshimi, and I was definitely known in the rest of my life as Yoshimi. It didn’t take long for me to realise that having 2 accounts wasn’t going to work, I was me, not SEO me and Knitting me & rat fancying me, just the one, Yoshimi, aka Sarah.
Recently I started to look at how other people on Twitter solve this issue, and decided that there are 4 distinct types of twit
1. The Split Personality
These people have two or more accounts, one for every facet of their personality. There is very little cross over between the two, in fact you might even be hard pushed to connect them. They use all of the latest gadgets and gizmos to manage their multiple personas, and make sure that they never tweet the wrong thing from the wrong account.
This doesn’t include managing a company account as well as your own, although if you’ve ever tried to do that for any length of time you may be able to imagine the immense amount of pressure these people put themselves under. The great thing about this approach is that you can be sure never to offend anyone with dirty joke, or bore anyone with a tweet that isn’t relevant to them. But on the other hand your followers will see you as flat, you become one dimensional, a person without depth that letting people see the other sides of your personality brings.
If you want to keep all your personas separate, be sure to bring a little from all of them into each account, and don’t expect to be able to build more than 1 “big” personality, unless of course you want to make maintaining your twitter accounts a full time job.
2. The Secret Diarist
Everyone understands the need for privacy, but by advertising the fact that there are things you don’t want your followers to know, you lay doubt as to the sincerity of your public account. Your followers may feel that you’re whispering behind their back, or that you don’t really find them interesting. If you really feel there are some things you don’t want to share with your public, it may be best to keep that fact secret too, you can always email those bits of gossip that just won’t keep (hey that might actually be that use for Google Wave you’ve been looking for)
3. The Parrot
Parrots can’t quite decide whether they are two people or one. The don’t have enough to say for two people, but aren’t ready to commit to either persona. They have people following both of their accounts, and seeing each tweet twice, as they struggle to make the decision over which account they should use and whether everyone will follow them to it when the finally commit.
Worse still, the longer they leave it the more followers each account gets and the harder the move becomes. Best advice to Parrots, make the decision now. It’s like ripping off a sticking plaster, the sooner you do it the better it will feel.
4. The Dudes
You remember the Dude, he let it all hang out. He didn’t care what anyone thought of him, or if he was wearing the wrong outfit for the venue. He just wanted to be the dude, and you either liked it, or you didn’t go bowling. Dudes have just one account, and from there hey will tweet about everything from the whether, to their blog, from work to baby puke. They are well rounded people with lives apart from social media, SEO and ROI. They don’t exist to keep their followers happy, or to make sure that every tweet is really interesting, they’re just there to tweet and say what’s on their minds.
Of course this does mean that you only want to read one out of every 50 tweets from them, but hey, the dude abides.
Photo Credits
oudeschool (main image)
saltatempo (split personality)
fortinbras (Secret Diarist)
artolog (Parrot)
Great post Sarah. I’ve been somewhat falling out of love with Twitter recently (for reasons I shall go into in a post of my own) however this has lifted my spirits and rekindled the flame somewhat.
I notice everyone has classified themselves as a ‘dude’ so far, I wonder if you will actaully uncover any Secret Diarists or Parrots….
I would love for them to come an reveal themselves, I’m not going to name and shame anyone, and I suspect they will stay in hiding. Nice to know there’s so many Dudes reading Leeds SEO though isn’t it, Makes me feel like having a white russian at lunch!
Well I count my self as a dude… dunno – opinions?
@rishil
Personally Rishi, I think you’re THE Dude (but shhhh don’t tell Stu)
Split personality for the example you give — personal tweeting vs. company/brand tweeting. The latter is tough. I’m constantly wondering whether I should say what “I think” vs. what “we think”, with the “we” being the brand.
I have a private account… “I’m not going to name and shame anyone, and I suspect they will stay in hiding.” … what the hell do I have to be ashamed of?
@Jane
It was just a comment in relation to the fact that only people who had a single account had voted, if you’re not ashamed of anything, then I guess the answer is nothing.
ETA I also said I would love for people to come and reveal themselves, because I would love to know more about why people have the accounts that they have- All I’ve been able to comment o is how it looks from the outside looking in, perhaps you can educate me on the other side of the account so to speak?
@Jane
I kind of like the idea of a private account to talk to my ‘offline’ friends (as Lucy calls them) but I’m just too lazy… I already basically never tweet through @LeedsSEO.
@Rishil you *probably* are but I don’t know whether you bowl or wear dressing gowns outside so I’m not willing to commit yet…
The whole idea of Twitter best practices when it comes to personal preferences for use is ridiculous, like when people all-knowingly tried to tell Rand (@randfish) how many people he should follow earlier this year. My “success” (whatever that is; in online marketing? Personally? At Xbox?) is hardly dependent on how I choose to use a website.
You can consider my friends and I insincere for maintaining two accounts if you like, but I find advice on how to use Twitter for personal purposes a bit like strangers giving me directions on what colour I should paint my toenails.
Wow, ok, well I would never presume to tell anyone how to use their twitter account(s) but then I don’t recall anywhere saying “Jane Copland you shouldn’t have more than one account and you are wrong for doing so”
What I did say is that this is how using twitter in this way may appear to others, unfortunately neither you or I can control what others think of us, except by our actions, so the best we can do is carry on how we think it should be done. So I apologise if this light hearted post has offended you personally in some way, it certainly wasn’y meant to, as it wasn’t aimed at you or anyone else. (I was aware that you had two accounts, however you weren’t the only one, and as far as I am aware a number of the people I came across doing this weren’t associated with you, as they came from some of my own interest groups).
@Jane
@Yoshimi_S
Woah! That’s English for ’stop a horse’.
I’m stepping in Dad style to prise you two apart – play nice kids!
@stuartpturner
And you’re trying to prise us apart by calling us horses? Do you see where this could back fire on you?
It was a Partridge quote – one nil to me – yessssss.
@stuartpturner
I thought you said you saved your competativeness for when there was a competition?
The quote game is always on the go! It’s like the hole game, you’re already playing it…
The hole game?
This will explain everything:
http://everything2.com/?node_id=702927
It was on Malcolm in the Middle aaaaages ago, we used to play it at school (usually in lessons)
@stuartpturner
uh huh, as long as you’re having fun!
I know you weren’t referring to me personally, nor to any of the other people you know of whose “alter egos could be sabotaging their success”. That’s the beauty of writing in generalisations, really: you can counter any objection with “I didn’t mention you personally.”
So we can agree to disagree? I maintain a private account because it pleases me to use Twitter’s brilliantly-structured, easy to use forum and know that what I say won’t be available to anyone I don’t know about, including a search engine. The four or five people I know of who do the same thing would likely say they do so for similar reasons. You believe this could sabotage our successes due to how other people will see us as a result, and we don’t.
@Jane
Absolutely, I spend half my life agreeing to disagree (hmm perhaps I’m too disagreeable) so I have no problem to doing it here.
I would just add though, that already being known, and having the following as you do, puts you in a very different position to someone who is trying to build a following in any area. As this post was prompted by a friend who is struggling to get a foothold in an area she would like to be more involved in, I think it’s an important distiction to make, and one I probably should have made in the post itself, but I forgot about it and you only just reminded me Jane (thank you)
I’m late to the party (again).
At the moment I’m a ‘dude’ but I have to confess that having a ’secret diarist’ account does appeal. I don’t like having to censor myself, (but from time to time it is necessary) and as such having a locked account really appeals.
As such it’s not so much public v private persona thing; just a matter of personal preference.
Is it the best way to go if you’re looking to build a following? Probably not. However if I was trying to get a foothold in a new community I think I’d look to get social via commenting on blogs / forums in that niche etc, and then look to take the connections I had made over to twitter – rather than just trying to network via twitter.
I’d also recommend a balance of tweeting ‘on topic’ (i.e. about the niche you’re targeting), plus some more personal stuff. No one cares when I share SEO links, but when I say that I love Don’t Stop Believing by Journey people respond.
Journey pwns SEO