Register early and save on ERE Expo 2010 Spring in San Diego from March 15-17.

Blog Network

Jeremy Roberts

I am an executive recruiter and staffing professional based in Dallas, TX. I have worked extensively in the Healthcare, Finance, and Financial Services industries. I specialize in placement of mid-management professionals, physicians, and healthcare practice administrators with salaries ranging from $100,000 to $300,000. When not at work I enjoy spending time with my wife and three kids and staying involved in all of the activities they enjoy.

Do you have separate business and personal Twitter accounts? follow this blog post

posted by on Nov. 23, 2009

I have a great time on Twitter and have built an account with about 5000 followers, most of which I follow back.  I have struggled with if it is best to have a personal twitter and a business twitter or if one should just have one account and combine personal and business tweets.  Of course one wants to show individuality on the business account but do people really care about seeing pictures of my poodles new haircut?  

I'd love to hear other recruiting pros thoughts on this.  Please respond below....... and be sure to follow me on twitter ;)  @JeremyRobertsTX

twitter
| 6 comments | flag

6 comments

Log in or register to post a reply.

  • 1 point 2 months ago

    I'm anxious to see how others weigh in on this question Jeremy. It's a good one. 

    I DO keep two accounts, one for family and friends, the other for everything business related. The family/friends feed follows my movements and frustrations through airports and trains, and offers funny greetings and inside jokes to those who know me personally. 

    My professional feed offers RTs on topics of interest, responses to business discussions, and sometimes positive or negative comments on business-related products or services. 

    My personal feed is very guarded (I follow who I like, but only allow close friends to follow me).  My professional feed (@RayFerreira) is wide open (with the exception of sleazy or vulgar followers). 

    That's my story... but I'm pretty new at all this.

  • 1 point 2 months ago

    Thanks for all of the great comments.  I personally have 2 accounts.  I have a business account that I tweet some personal things on, and I have a personal account that is protected.  I use it primarily to post pictures of my kids, and share opinions that I think might not concern most of the followers on my @jeremyrobertstx account.  I am also a compulsive tweeter so once I hit 10-12 a day I try to switch to my other account for personal tweets so I don't annoy followers :) 

    For those of you that mentioned you had poodles, here is a picture of Jasper, our 8 month-old miniature poodle :)

     

  • 1 point 2 months ago

    As someone new to Twitter, I use 2 accounts.  One for work and one personal.  The personal one allows me to explore off the wall subjects that I'm interested in.  The work account keeps me honest since it is a representation of my organization.    And to add, Poodles are fantastic.  I had a Toy Poodle who owned the house.

  • 1 point 2 months ago

    I have one for myself and one for JobShouts but I don't use the one from JobShouts much. My partner mostly runs that one. However, I use my account to tweet both professional content and personal content. I'm conservative in that I don't use foul language and am mindful of what I tweet about.

    This is my approach to my social media accounts:

    LinkedIn - strictly professional

    Facebook - mostly personal

    Twitter - a little of both

    :)

  • 1 point 2 months ago

    I've been thinking about this a lot too - we talked about it briefly here:

    http://www.ere.net/2009/05/19/social-media-the-public-and-the-private/

    and touched on it at

    http://ryanestis.com/podcasts/singh_estis_final.mp3

    and elsewhere on ERE.

    You mentioned "individuality" ... I think it might depend how much individuality one wants to show. I've noticed one third-party recruiter post something pretty vulgar on Twitter that made me wonder if he offended anyone or lost any (current or potential) business. In other cases, I've noticed posts on Twitter that are just really juvenile. One recruiting-related consultant I noticed last week re-tweeted something on Twitter about Rudy Guiliani being a "butthole." I don't care if you love or hate Rudy Guiliani, or if the post was about Barack Obama, George Bush, Paris Hilton, or Michael Vick -- it just seemed juvenile ... not offensive, just not really funny or interesting or cute.

    I also think it depends how often you're "showing individuality." If 1 of 10 posts are about the poodle, your followers may not mind (as the owner of a standard poodle myself, I'll check out the photo). If 9 of 10 are about the poodle, they may be less interested and "unfollow you."

  • 1 point 2 months ago

    I have two Twitter accounts, for the 2 brands I represent most:  @RecruitingH2H (for Head2Head) and @RetiredWorker1.

    Neither of them did particularly well - I now have 1630 followers on RecH2H and 720 or so on Retired Worker - when I did all business-related tweets. 

    But I don't know what the magic mixture is:  @MarenHogan tweets largely about her quotidian experience and seems to be quite popular (and I'm still not entirely sure how she makes a living); other people tweet nothing but news stories and also seem to do well.

    I'm with Todd on the not-raving-but-droning angle - I think it's a bad idea to use words like 'butthole' in any context, really.  But given that social media is all about building relationships with people with whom you have something in common, posting nothing but links to articles isn't going to do much.

    @BillBoorman has done a phenomenal job of raising his profile not through his tweets but through the CONVERSATIONS he has through his tweets.  I don't know that he posts links/info/tweets that are particularly earth-shattering, but he does a fantastic job of actually engaging in dialogue with other tweeps, which I know has expanded his network considerably.

    The other thing is:  To a certain extent we're talking to ourselves on Twitter, anyway.  I always get a couple of new followers when I talk about the politics of the dog park; will they turn into useful contacts and/or money down the road?  Who the hell knows?

    I do know that last week I engaged a GREAT consultant for a new H2H project entirely because he was someone I found following me on Twitter.