Are You a Person or an Org on Twitter?
Posted by Allison Fine on February 25, 2009
There was a great post on the Chronicle’s website today about the use of Twitter by nonprofit organizations.
Great quotes from my Social Citizens blog pal Kari Dunn Saratovsky at the Case Foundation and Beth (of course!) on the various ways that foundations and nonprofits are using Twitter to share news, raise money, organize events and generally connect with their supporters.
But one of the tips at the end of the article left me pondering. It said: Be professional. While for an animal-rights group blogging about vegan recipes may make sense, posting about how disappointed you were in last night’s episode of Lost probably doesn’t.
I’m not sure I agree with this. I do like my Twitter friends to focus mainly on their work and our shared passion for the various ways that social media are enhancing social change efforts. But one of the nicest things about Twitter is how easy it is to get to know someone in such short bursts of communication. I’ve learned that my old friend Ruby is pregnant, and my new friend Qui is moving to the Northwest. I hear about job openings, job woes, what people ate at their business dinner and who is stuck on the tarmac. I am getting to know my business contacts as real people, not as suits behind a desk.
Here’s the best way to see the difference. I am friends with Andy Carvin (who I’ve only met through email and Twitter!) through his personal Twitter account, he also writes the more formal NPR tweets. Andy tweets as a person, where he’s going today, what he’s reading, who he’s seeing, and what great stories are online at NPR.org or other sites that I should read. And I often do. But when his tweets behind the formal NPRpolitics logo show up I hardly ever read them. I’m not friends with a logo and I find them cold to look at on my screen.
So, I think I disagree with the advice that one should be professional on Twitter. I think you should be yourself – which is always the best thing to be anyway, right? You should use Twitter to its best advantage, meaning use it to help you to connect in meaningful ways with large numbers of people who care about you and your cause.
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This entry was posted on February 25, 2009 at 1:54 am and is filed under Social Media. Tagged: Andy Carvin, beth kanter, case foundation, Chronicle of Philanthropy, Kari Saratovsky, npr. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
11 Responses to “Are You a Person or an Org on Twitter?”
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Mark Miller said
Like Andy Carvin, I also have a split personality on Twitter. I tweet for @childrenshealth (Children’s National Medical Center), which I try to make professional, personal, and conversational. As @mmiller20910, that’s 100 percent me. I sometimes talk about work, but also politics, music, hockey, or whatever else is going on. I love Twitter and am presenting about it next month at the National Association of Children’s Hospitals in Nashville. Hope to meet other twitterers there.
Holly said
Allison – great post. I couldn’t agree more that the “personal” part of Twitter is what makes it work. Really, it’s what makes all of social media really work. For years, we’ve used the “personal” in our works as nonprofits. It’s the personal relationships we’ve made with donors, collaborators and volunteers that really drive our work forward. Now, with social media, we can create and sustain those relationships on a different scale. But it’s still got to be personal.
That said, as someone who tweets as myself FOR my organization, I feel the call to “be professional.” I WILL tweet about my daughter, my musical preferences, and my love of bacon. But I WON’T tweet about religion or politics. but this lowering of walls between personal and professional in social media is going to be tough for us all to navigate for a while.
Anonymous said
I’m really glad you wrote this post, Allison. I haven’t been very active on Twitter, because of this confusion. Although it has been a great tool for me to learn more about professional things I care about from others, many personal friends who are on Twitter would be put off by a more professional tone. I could stick to tweeting about professional matters on our Case Foundation twitter account @CaseFoundation, but then I feel like I would lose the personal connection that can be gained from tweeting from my personal one @sokunthea. I will definitely be checking back often to see what others have to say!
Sokunthea Sa Chhabra said
I’m really glad you wrote this post, Allison. I haven’t been very active on Twitter, because of this confusion. Although it has been a great tool for me to learn more about professional things I care about from others, many personal friends who are on Twitter would be put off by a more professional tone. I could stick to tweeting about professional matters on our Case Foundation twitter account @CaseFoundation, but then I feel like I would lose the personal connection that can be gained from tweeting from my personal one @sokunthea. I will definitely be checking back often to see what others have to say!
Lucy Bernholz said
This makes me think of a bigger question – which I assume breaks along generational lines – but maybe not. Are we “whole” people where-ever we are? At work, online, etc? Seems like this might be another facet of the whole privacy discussion – what do we share with whom and how is it changing?
I’m interested in it more from the perspective of this post http://snipurl.com/cmmvt and how changes in this/greater fluidity might be critical as we think about org structures, careers over time, skills, network comfort, etc in the workplace/world of change that we are building
Allison Fine said
You’re always thinking, Lucy! These are really interesting points.
Allison
Carie Lewis said
Allison, I couldn’t agree with you more. I’m the twitter personality for the humane society of the united states (@humanesociety) and i’ve found it’s a great way to show that there are “real people” working for the org. If you’re so one way… just posting advocacy or donation campaigns… then you become less desirable as someone to follow. one of the cardinal rules of twitter is NOT to do that… to expand that to posting articles, photos, etc that may interest your audience. i post articles that others write that I find interesting, and retweet other’s posts.
A good example of this, I think, is when I was “tweeting the oscars”. Of course, I wrote about celebs wearing fur, movies with animals in them, Mickey Rourke’s cat, etc. but i also expressed my excitement when Slumdog Millionare won best picture. That had nothing to do with the HSUS, but I got a ton of @replies from followers expressing their shared excitement. It really made me feel connected to those people, who most likely, I’ll never meet in person.
I also started following news orgs that were interesting to me personally and locally, and I’ve found that they follow back, which could be a good way for them to pick up our animal-related news stories.
So I agree… be yourself! Just make sure your personality is in line with the org you’re posting for. I think people really enjoy a little personality behind a brand.
Allison Fine said
This is really interesting and helpful, Carie, thx. And Congrats on the success of your latest fundraising campaign!
Eugene Chan said
I think this point applies to most social network utilities, not just twitter.
Teh twitterverse is like being in one giant conference. I often feel that the value at being at conferences is the hallway conversation and the connection with people–not necessarily the conference agenda.
You hang around with people you know and have conversations–sometimes you wear your work hat, sometimes your old classmate hat, maybe its a church hat, or even Peace Corps connection. The cool thing is that others can “overhear” you and lean in to listen more if they’re interested or walk away and ignore you completely if you’re not interesting to them.
Organizational tweets are never as engaging to me if I don’t know who is behind the twitter handle. It’s not that easy to tell the difference sometimes.
brgulker said
Great post. Esepecially when it comes to non-profit type work, it’s helpful to keep our humanity in full view. We are all passionate, determined people
Ed said
I think there is room on Twitter for both more personal things and more organizational things. I use an organizational Twitter to point to articles and other web content that they might be interested in and information related to the organization.
On the other hand, I have a personal twitter which is more about me and less about the organization.
That is a happy medium for me.
One of the oddest things I have found is people using an organization logo and then twittering about more personal information. I often wonder if orgs realize that they are twittering things such as “my plane was late” or “this is a really good cup of coffee.”