Is it better to tweet as an individual or a company?
-
When using Twitter to generate interest in company blog posts, is it better to do it on a company account like @AcmeWidgets or a personal account like @JoeSmith, the owner of Acme Widgets?
-
It depends on what your branding strategy is, are you trying to develop more of a brand and reputation as Joe Smith, owner of Acme Widgets, or do you want Acme Widgets to be a well known resource for all things widget related?
I personally think doing both is a great idea - it takes more time but you get the benefits of both.
You will have a little bit of a harder time as a business rather than an individual though, people want to see human faces in their stream, not logos - you should still use a logo or mascot that represents the business though, otherwise this will be confusing.
People are generally leary about following businesses and dont want to be marketed to. Due to this uphill battle you will have to really focus on a great content strategy to connect with users, provide useful information and go out of your way to find and answer questions.
It also doesn't hurt to humanize your brand a bit. Use words like "We" a lot and not "our company" or "Acme Widgets" - make jokes and be transparent. You can also add a picture of the individual behind "@AcmeWidgets" to the twitter background to help give it that human element.
Also regardless of which account you are on, concentrate on connecting to users and sharing great content - don't spend the majority of your time talking about yourself, your company or your widgets. People will get turned off by the over-promotion.
-
I think that it depends more upon the style of the posting than the name behind it.
If JoeSmith is a curmudgeon you better keep him off of twitter... but if he is a friendly, helpful person who generously gives his time then the boss being helpful with the public can be a very strong statement. But if he is too busy on twitter and not runnin' the biz then you better keep him off of twitter.
The problem arises when you give the job to JoeSchmoe and he posts on his own account. Then after he builds a following and gets hired away by smart competitor his following is now out of your control. Same could happen when JoeSmith retires or sells the biz.
I think that it would be cool if AcmeWidgets had a mascot like Wiley Coyote and he would be helpful funny and owned by the company.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Re-branding Company Social Profiles
Hi Does anyone have experience of re-branding LinkedIN or Facebook? Can you keep the company page/followers and just change your name or do you have to start again? Thank you!
Social Media | | BeckyKey0 -
Google Plus Company Page Verification
Hi How do you test successful G+ company page/publisher integration/verification if using the less technical methods such as linking between the Home page and the G+ company page instead of adding code to the head section? Since i take it the google structured data testing tool cant work in these cases since no code on the head section ! Is it best to add the code anyway ? I note my clients still not achieving a knowledge graph card/section in the search results for a branded search but i have heard that doesnt come until you have at least hundreds of followers and/or G+ interactions. All Best
Social Media | | Dan-Lawrence
Dan0 -
G+ company page custom url
Hi I thought these could only be strictly brand name and as suggested by Google however i see a clients competitor has added an obvious target keyword to the end of their custom url Does this have any benefit ? Is it advisable to try achieve similar for my client or is it bad practice since contrary to G's guidelines ? If it is ok to do similar how do you edit your custom domain ? All Best Dan
Social Media | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
UTM Code, URL Shortner, or hardline in tweet
We have partners that promote our site via social media. We're looking to leverage twitter to increase SEO rankings. Does it make a difference if we use a link straight to our domain, our domain with UTM codes, or a url shortener?
Social Media | | draftster0 -
Duplicate Content issue: Amazon book review & company blog
Can my site be penalized for including a book review verbatim in my blog that I also post on Amazon? What are the steps I need to take? I have written a book review that I want to post on Amazon. I am also planning to create a blog post and include the exact text of the review within the post which I will then also promote on my social channels. What do I need to watch out for in terms of duplicate content? Is there a sequence I should follow? We have the rel=canonical tag on our site which is WordPress.
Social Media | | gfiedel0 -
Google Autor Profiles in Big Companies
I work for a big company and they want to use the google autor tag. The goal is to get the rich snippets and better rankings in the future from having a trusworthy autor for each topic building up followers basically. The problem is that the company does not want to pay employees to build up their own autor profiles/trust since an employee could leave the company any time and we would have to start from scratch building another autor profile. Now I know that google only wants real people in google plus bla bla ... bla bla ... How do you guys handle this problem? I thought of having our autors sharing one made up autor profile which is owned by the company.
Social Media | | Windex0 -
What to tweet and blog about?
A little background: The site I'm working on, www.ixl.com, is a math practice site for pre-K through 8th grade. Our content consists of math skills where we randomly generate math problems, grouped by grades and topics. We have around 300 skills per grade. The question: We don't currently have a twitter feed, Facebook page, or a blog. I'm working on setting these up, or at least a twitter feed and the Facebook page first. I'm wondering, what kinds of things will we tweet about once I get a twitter feed set up? What kinds of things should we be tweeting about? Things like online education articles? And articles about teaching math? Do you guys think that would be compelling enough to get followers and make this productive for us? Another question, how important do you think a blog is, compared to a twitter feed and Facebook page? I was thinking it would be fun to set up a blog, and post math questions from the site 2x or 3x a week, as well as other content that could overlap with the twitter feed.
Social Media | | john4math0 -
How much attention do you pay to hashtags in your tweets?
I haven't really paid much attention to adding hashtags to my tweets, but I'm thinking I should. For my real estate site I just started following the mayor of our city. I noticed that he finishes each of his tweets with #ourcityname. I clicked on the hashtag because I wanted to find more people who tweet about our city. Then, I suddenly realized that if I used that hashtag when I tweet then other people would find me and follow me. Any thoughts?
Social Media | | MarieHaynes0