The Man Who Didn’t Tweet Twice

When I joined Twitter around 9 months ago, I joined twice.

My rationale for this was that I wanted to use it for creating a network of work contacts and colleagues, and at the same time I saw its potential as a way of conversing with friends, but I was worried that those who followed my “social” tweets (@MrSimonWood) would be turned off by a stream of ed-tech tweets, and that those who were interested in my work (@s_n_wood) would not want to know what I thought of last night’s Doctor Who or who should be leader of the Labour Party.

In retrospect this wasn’t a very good decision, and I don’t think I’d have made it if I’d had a better understanding of how Twitter works.

The problem is that my interests and my work have a huge overlap (not to mention the confusion I cause myself by socialising with friends I’ve met through work!) Increasingly I find I’m having to decide whether to tweet to one account or the other.  I could tweet to both, but then I’d need to change client or cut and paste, and also the people who are following both of me will get it twice.  I’m starting to over-think, and over-complicate communication through Twitter, and that defeats the whole purpose of something that is supposed to be short, easy and instant.

When I chatted to @egrommet some time ago, his advice was to let your followers sort this out (adding that they’ve all got Tweetdeck filters set anyway!)  But I’m not quite ready to deluge @MrSimonWood with conference tweets (I can get quite into live tweeting when I’m at events) so I’m going to use a “live” account (this is something I’ve seen @MikeNolan do very effectively as @MikeNolanLive) for conferences and the like.  However I’m finding it hard to see the benefits of having separate “work” and “social” accounts, whilst I feel I definitely want to avoid become a man who tweets twice.

A merger is in the offing.

About Simon Wood

Lecturer in medical education, lapsed mathematician, Doctor Who fan and garden railway builder. See simonwood.info for more...

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