Do non-​​personal Twitter streams work?

Is it not going against the core pur­pose of Twitter to use the ser­vice as a group account (for example, an account for one’s com­pany)? Does it really achieve the return that the com­pany is look­ing for in terms of inter­act­ing with their mar­ket? Do Twitter users catch on to this and not inter­act with the account? How do you know who you’re talk­ing with, if it’s a cor­por­ate account? With some celebrit­ies who tweet, they’ve hired a “Twitter PA”, as it were, to tweet for them.

Using a Twitter account isn’t the same as hav­ing your bio­graphy writ­ten for you. Twitter users want to inter­act with other Twitter users, as is the core func­tion­al­ity of the ser­vice. I’d rather inter­act with a user who has a per­sonal account, who I hap­pen to know is the CEO of or is work­ing at a cer­tain com­pany. That way, if you have a query for that com­pany, you know who you’re talk­ing with and are also aware that the per­son works for the com­pany. Brands, bands, com­pan­ies, etc sign up on Twitter look­ing for that “per­sonal con­nec­tion” to their mar­ket. For that “dir­ect access”. How does sign­ing up a Twitter account for your brand do this? Or, for that mat­ter, does it do this at all?

In some cases, a band (for example), a Twitter account can be used to dir­ectly con­nect with a fan­base. The “per­sonal con­nec­tion” can be achieved by treat­ing Twitter like any per­sonal user would. Go to tweet-​​ups, par­ti­cip­ate in con­ver­sa­tions, con­trib­ute. Twitter isn’t your soap box, it’s a clean and tidy lounge that serves cock­tails and soft drinks (don’t drink and tweet ).

Yes, a non-​​personal Twitter stream can work. For example, a blog can post their blog posts on Twitter, act­ing more like an RSS feed. This saves the user hav­ing to open a feed reader, sub­scribe to emails or to even have to visit the web­site without know­ing what they’re going to see. In this case, the inter­ac­tion is some­what dif­fer­ent. Being that the account is rep­res­ent­ing a brand, the users may find it dif­fi­cult to inter­act on a per­sonal level with the account, which would limit the account to basic query and response con­ver­sa­tions, or con­ver­sa­tions per­tain­ing to the top­ics dis­cussed in the blog.

So that’s my view on non-​​personal Twitter accounts. I’ve explored both sides of the coin. What are your views?

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