Twitter for Business: when tweeting as your business, do you use "I"?

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Katie Hellmuth's picture Submitted by Katie Hellmuth on   |  2 Comments

Tweeting for Business - @collectiveeWhen tweeting for your business, or on behalf of another, do you use the first person "I", or are you more of a "we"? This question applies to businesses that are run by more than one person, or have a team of people that keeps the business twitter stream alive. We were just discussing this for our own @collectivee handle. We each have personal Twitter accounts that specialize in different areas, but all three of us (so far) tweet on the @collectivee handle, if we are inspired by something on the TV, or are attending a cool event in Brooklyn, Chicago or LA - wherever any of us is at the moment. It's good to set a mini Manual of Style for your Tweetworking.

A good use of a business Twitter account that may be run by more than one person (I can't tell!) is @jenisicecreams

We discuss strategies like this in the intimate Tweetworking workshops:
http://www.tinshingle.com/classes-and-workshops/online-presence

What are your thoughts?

Category: 
Social Media
Twitter

Comments

Ryan replied on

Hey, Katie! Thanks for the mention -- and excellent points.

A style manual or guide is absolutely essential in my opinion, particularly if you've got multiple people tweeting under the same account.

So is a clear strategy.

At Jeni's right now, it's just one person running the account (me), though that could change at any point. And you're probably going to see a shift from us in the near future towards what Jeremiah Owyang recently described as a 'Corporate With Persona' profile (http://bit.ly/1J0Iy), where our username will remain as is, but in the bio section, it'll clearly indicate who's running the account. This is all about making personal connections, no? I'm not *the* voice of the company, I'm *a* voice, from within. From a user standpoint, I really like knowing who's on the other end. Plus, making that change enables the individual -- or individuals -- updating the account to make natural 'I' statements, which always feel a bit weird coming from a 'pure corporate brand' account, to me. I'm always trying to find artful ways around it and frequently come up short; it can be limiting.

But we're always tweaking and adjusting and looking for feedback -- thank you! -- and learning from mistakes. There's no substitute for experience and it helps to have a framework -- with that in mind, Tweetworking looks like a great workshop.

Cheers.