photo courtesy of gemtek1
This week I am answering questions that didn’t fit in the scope of the Engaging Followers on Twitter webinar. If you haven’t signed up for this webinar, by all means, go here and get on the email list so I can include you in the webinar.
When Deborah Blake provided yesterday’s question about balancing Twitter with writing, she also asked about balancing personal and public selves.
I think each person has to set this too much information (TMI) on Twitter line for themselves. Your branding and the tolerance of your followers will teach you how personal your followers want your tweets to be.
In the beginning, err on the side of caution until you know what works for your followers.
Another thing to keep in mind – if you are reading your Twitter stream and not filtering it through lists, the people you follow will influence your comfort level with sharing. Be a little choosy about who you follow because over time you may start to think what you read is the standard Twitter fare.
If you think Twitter is 90% spam, try unfollowing the spammers and you’ll see you always had spam within your control. If you are shocked by what some people share, consider carefully whether you want to keep following them and risk becoming inured to their openness.
Here are some tips you can use when considering the amount of personal information you’ll share on Twitter.
1. Know Your Followers
I am leading with this because every list I have ever seen of 10 things you should never tweet includes what you are eating as a taboo subject.
I accept that some tweeps don’t want to read about food.
I could even be convinced that most tweeps don’t want my recipes or photos of my meals.
However, as @keenonquinoa, I have gathered 1500 followers who don’t mind if I tweet about eating quinoa all day and night.
With the @keenonquinoa persona, I connected with a virtual army of foodies interested in sharing every detail of the foods they eat. My engaged followers include men and women, food bloggers and chefs, housewives and fitness geeks. All are cheerfully tweeting away about food despite the warnings from social media gurus that this is TMI for Twitter.
On Twitter, there are no absolutes, and you need to understand your stream and the conversation it tolerates. (One exception – don’t tweet about blowing up airports.)
2. Don’t Confuse Your Followers
Often the problem with sharing too much personal information is that it becomes too much information in general for tweeps to remember about you. This dilutes your branding because people cannot easily form associations with your brand if you don’t remain consistent and focused. Besides, you should be able to connect with a lot of people interested in a tight cluster of your interests, but you will find it much harder to find those few tweeps who want to hear about all twenty of your favorite pastimes.
Settle on the subjects you plan to share when designing your brand, and then you can weigh each potential tweet against its relevance to your brand.
3. Remember Everyone Can Read Your Tweets
…unless your tweets are protected, of course.
For the rest of us, our tweets are out in the world and able to be searched by anyone with the interest and knowledge. Your public tweets are headed to the Library of Congress, and for all you know, your future biographer may cite your tweets someday.
If there is anyone you hope will not read a public tweet, it is probably wise not to send it. I expect that ten years from now, my kids will be able to search and find what I was saying about them today.
4. Be Human
Having said all that, everyone on Twitter is looking to connect with real people, so when it makes sense with your branding to share a little of your personal life, go ahead and test it out. Even if you lose a few followers, the ones that remain will be more in tune with you.
I remember one day Darren Rowse (@problogger) tweeted from an emergency room in Australia where he was waiting for his son to be treated for asthma. Rowse didn’t make a big deal of it, just shared his frustration with being at the hospital instead of home in his bed.
Having been there myself long ago (in the emergency room with a child who can’t breathe at 3 am), for a few moments I felt like he and I had a connection, kind of like realizing your hero puts on his pants one leg at a time. Apparently, blogging success doesn’t prevent one from having challenging parenting moments.
However, if Rowse tweeted all day long about his son, I think his would be a different brand and he would have a different mix of followers.
In the end it comes down to the brand, the followers, and what those followers show you they want from you. Anything that doesn’t fit is TMI on Twitter.
What do you think? Is there a line on Twitter one shouldn’t cross? Do you share personal information or keep it all business?
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