I've got to know Christie Adams pretty well since she was an attendee at Interactive Ontario's last lunch event. She writes regular blog posts for PR in Canada, a lot of them about social media. Her latest one brings up the issue of how to represent a brand on Twitter, a question I coincidentally posed a short while before. People are dabbling, but as far as I can tell, there's no general consensus either way.
There's two ways of looking at this tricky subject:
(1) Use your personal Twitter account, but stress in each tweet that you are representing the brand. Also put some info in your bio about that aspect too. Pros: You have a group of people already following you who may be able to help you with the branding, if they feel inclined to do so. You won't have to start from scratch building up that network. Cons: Your followers may feel used, or get confused as to whether there's a hidden agenda behind your tweets.
(2) Set up a new averagejoeATcompany Twitter account solely for that purpose. Pros: You are blatantly and transparently stating that you work for/represent that brand, so can feel free to keep the tweets very focused on achieving that aim, without worrying that your followers will misrepresent your tweets. Also, if people pay attention to your Twitter name before following you, then it should be obvious who you tweet on behalf of, so followers â€" although there may be fewer â€" will be advocates, fans, clients, customers who love you and customers who hate you who want to vent. Cons: It takes time to build up a good, solid network to get some branding love, so if the client wants immediate results ... then they should possibly not be looking at social media as an option. [Which is actually a pro, as those kinds of clients then won't muddle it for people who do get it.]
So, which side of the fence am I on? Still deciding, but leaning towards the "keep your own account and be transparent" option. Who knows? Tomorrow is another day. This kind of debate changes all the time.
As an aside, I did get an interesting response by e-mail from someone who I greatly respect, but will keep anon: "Tricky one. Hmmm. I guess it depends who you are. If you've already got 5,000 followers, probably stay you. Remember, your ID in Twitter is how people find you, so if you built up JohnATBrand and then quit, you're JohnATstartingoverkindascrewed. : )"
~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada