A tweet this morning from Jeremy Meyers asked the question:
“If your personal Twitter account handle isn’t your real name, why not?”
His replies were interesting. Most people use a brand, have a common name, or someone already had that name. I replied that since @3HatsComm is my professional account, I use my business name for branding.
What I didn’t say was that I have a personal, secret account too.
To be clear, @3HatsComm is the real me, all the time. It’s transparent, honest with a healthy does of my personality. It’s also my public account, there with my real name for the world to see.
When Anonymity is your friend
One person I follow professionally is @mktgdouchebag. This person vents rants on public relations, social media and other things marketing from the safety of this secret Twitter handle. For all I know I also follow this person “in real life.”
There are plenty of good reasons to not use your real name for Twitter. Like maybe you’re looking for a new job, don’t want your current boss to know.
I started with two accounts so I could learn the ropes, without making “mistakes” publicly but now there’s a good deal of crossover of both professional and personal interests. I follow and tweet mostly about PR, social media and marketing. In moderation I now also tweet about wine, sports, TV and movies, travel, snark but I still draw the line at:
- Sex, politics, religion.
- My bad TV viewing and obsessions**, or that I’m time shifting and multitasking, working on projects with Hulu going in the background.
- Angry rants and complaints that gotta go somewhere, a la Dear Client missives.
- Excessive profanity though, sometimes swearing helps.
- My yearnings for the right lottery ticket numbers so I can retire to Disneyworld or Hawaii.
If ever I must tweet these taboos, it’s from my double secret probation Twitter account, which truthfully is pretty tame and boring.
What is taboo for Twitter?
Matthew Inman has done frackin’ hysterical comics and quizzes on Twitter and Facebook oversharing. Depending on the dialogue, topics like sex, politics or religion may not be off limits. Sure you may turn off a few of your followers, if they’re watching right then and you tweet something they find offensive.
Perhaps it’s the legacy problem: Google remembers so what you tweet will become part of your public profile. Not to mention enshrined in the Library of Congress for eternity. IDK.
Tell the truth. Are you a secret Tweeter? What don’t you tweet?
**BTW I just watch bad dramas and mindless fluff plus some not-even-guilty-pleasures like The Vampire Diaries (which is surprisingly good.. no really!) that no one my age should watch, much less tweet so much about. #dontjudgeme 😉