You caught the Twitter buzz from a news report. You jump on the Twitter bandwagon. Next up? Deciding how to profile yourself. There are two main options: a personal brand or a company brand.

 

I recently enjoyed a post called Meet Your Neighbors by my colleagues at Tricycle Consulting. The post deconstructs the Twitter population by type. One of which is described as a n00b, aka a disinterested rookie. One of their points is that a "n00b" move is "tweeting as a company, not a person." They say absolutely don't do it because it's darn near criminal (my words, not theirs).

 

Here is where we split hairs. Months ago, I created a company-branded Twitter profile. I called it the beginner's version. My logic was this: my Twitter-leery staff could use this profile like a bike with training wheels. I would teach them the basics over time, as we had time which is a very important point, and then eventually we could take off the training wheels. At that time, they would decide if they wanted their own personal Twitter profile, or if they would stick with the company profile. It was my "baby steps" version of getting them there.

 

After reading about the n00b I was branded as, I came up with three solid-gold reasons to use a company-branded Twitter profile:

 

1.      Your fear has overcome you. You are on the Twitter diving board, but can't convince yourself to jump in alone. Use your company's brand to be your face. After you've jumped in, you can swim slowly into the deep-end. One day you'll find yourself swimming in the deep end and you'll wonder how that happened.

 

2.      You have limited time to learn new tools. Getting up-to-speed on Twitter makes your to-do list every week, but somehow doesn't ever get checked off. Create a company-branded Twitter profile, and share the learning load with your staff. Death in Twitterville is when your account is idle or incomplete. A successful Twitter profile is attended to at least weekly, if not daily or hourly. Share the love with your mates to leverage bandwidths of time, knowledge, and ability.

 

3.      You don't have a personal brand developed. When you log on, you are overwhelmed by the tasks of finding and uploading a photo of yourself, writing a bio about yourself, and figuring out what link to use since you don't have a blog. By using your company's profile, you can leverage your company's logo, profile, and website to quickly create a complete Twitter profile.

 

One of my Dad's sayings is "You never get finished with something unless you get started." Hence, if you are more comfortable being with your company on Twitter, then do it. And if over time, you leap into your own personal profile, good for you. But, if you don't ever make that leap, that's okay too. Purism has a place in a classroom, but street savvy it what gets us there.

 

Which side of the argument do you side with?