Confessions of a Six Figure Professional Blogger

How Many Twitter Accounts Should You Have?

April 26, 2009 | Feature, Social Media

You scream Twitter. I scream Twitter. We all scream for Twitter. Cool. So, here’s a question for us: How many Twitter accounts should we have?

I asked this question on Twitter earlier this week and got many responses. Several of the people who replied said they had more than one Twitter account. A few said only one. One person asked, “How many do we need?”

I personally have five Twitter accounts. Of course, my primary one is for myself, @davidrisley. But, I have some for other purposes. I have @tampatweets and that’s for a local project I may or may not do at some point. I’ve got @pcmech for my tech blog, although I really don’t use it much. I’ve got my daughter on Twitter (@elyanarisley). And I’ve got @blogmasters for an upcoming program you’re sure to hear about soon.

With that, you can probably tell where I’m going with this question. The answer is: Have as many Twitter accounts as you need!

Realize that Twitter is growing quickly. Twitter usernames are quickly becoming as valuable as domain names. Just as there was a gold rush for dot-com’s and now we hear “many of the good ones are taken”, the same goes for Twitter. Everybody should have their own name on Twitter, but you may want to reserve others for branding purposes down the road.

Here are a few of my recommendations:

  1. If you don’t have your own name registered on Twitter, go get it. There is a chance that somebody else with your same name has it already, but if not, you’ve GOT to reserve it.
  2. If you are building a brand for your blog, register the name of your blog on Twitter as well. In fact, anything you wish to brand and hopefully build up into something that people recognize should have a Twitter account.
  3. Use multiple Twitter accounts to keep brand consistency. For example, right now I’ve got posts from PCMech sent to my main Twitter account even though it is a different market. My primary push these days is problogging and that is the brand concept behind my name. Having tech posts in the same Twitter stream is admittedly a bit off message and that is exactly why I have @pcmech registered on Twitter. At some point, I’m probably going to reroute PCMech post notifications onto the @pcmech channel and get it off my own channel @davidrisley.

What about you? How many Twitter accounts do you have? And why?

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  • I have three blogs. I have one twitter account. I need two more for my other blogs. Every time I try it takes me right to my twitter account. How do I bypass that?
  • Your post about how many Twitter accounts should you have is really interesting. I am starting a couple of new ventures and am looking at domain names and in the planning stages but I take note of what you say about getting your Twitter names in advance and be prepared. A couple of my new projects are very different from each other so I would ideally like my Twitter accounts to be completely seperate to attract different followers and follow others in the relevant fields.
    The only issue I've found looking into it is that you can't register a new Twitter name unless you have a different email address, and I only have the one email address at the moment because I haven't got to the point of sorting out the hosting for my domain names and building my websites and no doubt having email addresses connected with those. Any suggestions?
    Follow me on Twitter @TheLauraLoveLee
  • Sean
    Nice tips, very insightful.
  • seayoo
    I added a new twitter account on my already existing info-account for a client who asked me to set up one and manage it. We are no longer doing biz and I want to delete that but it looks like it will delete all my info including my active personal account. I can't figure out what to do? Am I hopelessly locked into keeping this rogue account. The client will probably want to have their name on an active Twitter account but I don't want to be part of that. HELP And PS--I'm not all that savvy about twitter stuff
  • I'd like to see a layout that makes MySpace look more like Facebook.
  • veckhoff
    I have only one e-mail but want to have a second twitter account. Do I need to get a dedicated second e-mail address for this account?
  • I love this page! However, I agree with Dave above. Where is SUPER PC?? Glad to see 9X made it on here.
  • Richard60
    I snagged a bunch of good names, set up the accounts with pictures, profile, custom design and the whole bit, spent hours on it, then Twitter suspended them "due to suspicious activity"

    I used the gmail+ filter to do this as I had read that Twitter would see each email address separately. Really hacked me off.
  • Having multiple twitter accounts is like having multiple email accounts as most of us do. Have one for each purpose! And sure get those twitter names before its to late-its' free anyways :)
  • I have an account for each of my brands so a total of four accounts.

    I think it is important to keep the brands and twitter accounts apart so that messages are not mixed.

    My main brand and mostly used twitter account is http://twitter.com/forexadey
  • I have several Twitter accounts (5) purposed for various niches that I'm in. I find it works better when building relationships with followers who have similar interests. With one or two accounts I was cross marketing which diluted my messages and was confusing to me and to my audience. Also, it's easier to automate my posting using Google Alerts etc. having Twitter accounts that are keyword identifiable to each niche.
  • I have just one account - but I should have more

    I have several blog sites - finance, weight loss, insurance, etc.

    I use a wordpress plugin to echo my blog posts to twitter - and you can imagine my twitter profile is a mess with lots of unrelated post titles coming in

    Trouble is I don't know who started following me for which blog posts (I don't actually bother to tweet) so I can't sort it out now - but new blog sites I start will have their own twitter account
  • I would personally recommend one account with tonnes of followers - 1 account per niche IMHO
  • I have registered a few within a niche. I am not sure if it is better to concentrate on one Twitter account or spread it out over several accounts. Is one account with 10,000 followes better than 10 accounts with 1000 followers?

    Mark
  • Hey - well, I took your advice and went ahead and registered my own Twitter account! I've been putting off doing this for ages but now I have one - alexjamesmiller (it'll do!)

    Thanks,
    Alex
  • I'm in to niche marketing so I have more Twitter accounts then I can count. Of course I don't manage them all but I could never do it all from one account.
  • Personally I have 2 accounts, I feel that I have too many, I would be on twitter 24/7. For me, that would be just too much to keep track of.

    I personally like twittertise as well. Very simple app that can be used for many different things.

    So, for now I will be just using the 2 twitter accounts, unless I hire someone to write for me :)
  • I have a lot.

    One thing worth considering - especially in a situation like yours, David, where your personal name is your brand - is to separate business and personal.

    I used to have everything in one Twitter stream, but the tech/blogging people I was following started to drown out my friends and family; I started missing their tweets. So I split them out and keep them separated. Makes it much easier.
  • I have a few accounts, one personal and a couple for business. But I can already see the need to create a few more. Just trying to keep everything organized and focused makes it a challenge when you have multiple purposes for the same account.
  • I can only do one before this whole thing gets completely overwhelming. But I suppose I brand myself mainly, so maybe it works better that way.
    http://twitter.com/mattybyloos
  • I've got 3 registered, 2 that I use constantly. I'll be picking up a few more though in short time for new projects coming out.
  • Haha, I bet this post caused an "unknown" increase in tweetless accounts lol.

    You convinced me. I claimed 4 more for little projects of my own. ;)

    Keep them coming!
  • Thank you for insight. I first opened @tradingrichmom for sharing entry/exit Rich Mom's Online Forex Trading signals, and because my trading system is 80% about managing my own emotions with the help of human potential techniques e.g. EFT & Ho'oponopono I also registered @healingrichmom.
    Dagmar
    Trading results that make you say W.O.W.
    Follow me on http://twitter.com/tradingrichmom
  • Bob
    I wrote a piece on this topic in my blog. Alaska Mystic Ventures >> Pressing Reset On Social Media - Time For Segmentation http://ow.ly/4389
  • Let me check my seesmic desktop....I have 9 twitter accounts. Hey, what can I say?
  • I have two Twitter accounts, one of which (@oemperor) I no longer use. (My current one is @empoprises, the umbrella name for my blogs.)

    The mention of my @oemperor account leads me to an additional recommendation: if you have a Twitter account that you subsequently decide not to use, do NOT delete it. If you delete it, someone else could claim your formerly-used name and use it for spamming or other purposes.
  • I have three - one for my main blog about coffee, another for the Yankees/my hobby blog and I'm starting a third to interact with my blogger/biz friends. The only problem I have is managing them all. Splittweet is alright, but it definitely has some fatal flaws.
  • I have 4 currently with @ateegarden being my main one. My full name wouldn't fit in the characters given. So I created a few variations.

    I also have several alerts set up for my name and it's variations in the event that it should be mentioned somewhere in the twitterverse. :-)
  • veckhoff
    Do you need a dedicated e-mail for each one? I tried opening a second account with the address for my main account, and it said, "that e-mail address is already being used"
  • I have only one at the moment, but your post brought a sigh of relief as I'm working on a very different business at the moment and actually need a separate account to keep them apart.
  • First, thanks for your blog and all this valuable content and experience, that you're sharing with us.

    To answer to your question, I agree with you considering the Twitter "growering" and the way that I like to posess my own name ! so I got the point 1 done http://twitter.com/benmenson, as well for my company http://twitter.com/oneshotrecord, then I made a private one to share with my team.
  • I activated twitter tools on my new blog using my personal username, which then meant all updates on the blog are feeding to that username. However I've registered the blog's username and want all updates to feed into that twitter username and have failed getting this working, do you have a solution?
  • I've got a single account @nhangen followed by several business accounts, but I'm thinking of changing my strategy thanks to the amount of Twitter spam that has recently hit the feed. I like the idea of claiming one for my children and for a tweetup or two.

    Definitely the more the merrier, but I I think the rules are about to change with the way people have been using it. I used to follow nearly everyone that followed me, but I've been seeing so many spam accounts that I being much more hesitant to follow people. I think this can hurt the multiple accounts strategy.
  • Don
    So *you're* the dude who took tampatweets. I tried to snag it just out of curiosity, and failed. I'm feeling small worldish right now, although it's logical enough that something like that could happen on my follow list.

    I'm local, and you've got my email. Next time there's a tweetup or similar, hit me up.

    D
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