There’s nothing difficult about heading to Twitter and creating an account to represent your business. What is difficult is knowing what kind of account you want to create and the voice you’ll be using with it.  That takes some thinking about.  There are many different types of Twitter accounts that you can create.  You need to decide what’s going to be most effective for you.

Do you want to be strongly corporate and spend most of your time talking about the business? Do you want to create a personal account where you downplay what you do and focus more on relationships? Do you want to go totally left field and tweet as a syrup bottle? Don’t laugh. People are doing it! The type of Twitter account you create will depend on your goals for using it and, to some degree, your comfort level sharing information with your audience.

Below are some of the most common account types SMB owners are using on Twitter, along with some examples of each. Which ones do you identify with?

The Totally Corporate Account

There’s a difference between being a business owner on Twitter and being a business on Twitter. When you take The Totally Corporate Account it means that you’ve decided to tweet as the company itself. There’s no employee or real personality publicly tied to the account in any way.  The focus is on promoting business news, blog posts, deals and to offer customer service.  It’s not on building genuine relationships with customers. Everything that is done is done from the perspective of The Company.

For example, @JetBlue uses its account to tweet about flight deals, @Starbucks talks about offers on coffee, and we all recently saw @SouthwestAir use its account to do some reputation management when they got themselves into trouble. All three accounts take a 100 percent corporate approach to talking to Twitter users. We don’t know the face(s) behind the account or have any deeper understanding of the company’s voice because of them. The account is just there to keep us up-to-date on news and handle customer service complaints as they come up.

The Corporate-led Persona Account

The Corporate-led Persona allows the business to tweet as a Corporation, but to also include a bit of personality and insight behind the person publicly running the account.  Customers will be able to tie a face and a name to the account to help build a community around it. All of the tweets coming out will still be able the corporation, with the exception of a few spice of life tweets to add some flair and personality. However, it will still be very clear that the person tweeting is doing so on behalf of the company and that’s their reason for being there. It is in no way seen as a personal Twitter account.

For example, we know that @ComcastCares is Frank Eliason, @Zappos is Tony Hsieh, and @DunkinDonuts is the cheerful Dunkin Dave. They’re corporate accounts but they include branded personas working to build a community around what’s going on. When we tweet at Zappos, we know that we’re talking to Tony.  It provides an outward face to the company.

The Strictly Personal Account

A personal Twitter account is one with no obvious tie to any business or corporation. The person is tweeting as themselves, for themselves. They tweet about what they’re doing and where they’re going; they tweet after hours and on the weekends. The account is there to build relationships and to gain information.  We know the person works for someone but that “who” doesn’t play into their daily activity.

Lots of people choose to keep personal Twitter accounts. For example, my little brother is on Twitter. He’s a college student and has no business reason to do be there.  For him, Twitter is just another social network that he can use to talk to his friends, comment on his classes or to share links about his favorite TV shows or Apple products. There’s no corporate slant there. Just him communicating with his network.

The Business/Personal Hybrid Account

A hybrid Twitter account is what I see most small business owners creating. It’s an account that mixes both the personal and professional. You can tweet about what’s going on in your industry, what blogs you’re reading and any struggles you’re facing as a person in your field. But then you use the same account to tweet about taking your kids to the movies and what you’re making for dinner. You mix both worlds, even if that means alienating some who’d rather not know about the other. However, you don’t dilute your efforts trying to grow multiple accounts.

This is the approach that I use with @lisabarone, as do many other business Twitterers. Under the Hybrid approach, we share links during the day and talk about work, and then go home to tweet about what’s on TV and what we’re doing with our families. It’s a relationship-heavy approach that mixes both the professional and the spice of life tweets.

The Character Account

Character-based accounts have the tweeter posting from the voice, perspective and insight of an object/animal/plant/whatever. Everything is done through that character and the tweeter never breaks that character. It may sound silly, but we’re actually seeing a lot more businesses take this approach as they look for a way to stand out and connect with customers. If you do it right, it’s often ingenious. If you don’t, well, you just look silly.

Some of examples of this in action? There are plenty. Aflac tweets as a the @aflackduck, the National History Museum tweets as a whale with its @nathistorywhale account, @mrsbutterworths tweets as a syrup bottle, and @ColonelTribune is the voice of the Chicago Tribune and a totally made up figure.

There’s no right way to use Twitter, just like there’s no wrong way. However, there is the right way for you and that’s what you need to determine. You may even decide to adopt multiple account types. The question to ask yourself is, what’s going to help you get your message across? Built your strategy.

From Small Business Trends

Which Type of Twitter Account Should You Create?

We make marketing blunders when we don’t know who it is we’re marketing toward or when we try to treat all of our customers the same way. The truth is that our customers are not the same. They don’t take to marketing the same way, they don’t want the same things and they’re not equal in what they mean to our business. By segmenting customers into different “buckets” or personas it allows us to create a more targeted experience, while also helping SMB owners to better manage internal resources.

How Narrow Should You Segment? How Many Groups?

The simple answer is to create as many as make sense, whether that means creating two or twenty. Segmenting too broadly will take away your ability to customize service to the segment, while segmenting too narrowly may reduce profitability. You want to segment customers by the common characteristics shown to affect conversions. For example, if you’re a local hardware shop, you may only find that you have two customer types – Commercial and Non-Commercial. If you’re a florist, maybe you want to create an entire segment for marketing at Special Occasion customers or Men Buying For Wives. Once you get into the data, your segments should become fairly obvious.

What Kind of “Data” Should You Collect?

You already have most, if not all, of the data required to create your customer buckets. All you have to do is organize it and put it together in a way that makes it usable. Here are just a few different areas you can look at to help form your segments.

• Demographic Info: Look at age, gender, location, profession, lifestyle decisions, Web savviness, browser type, referral information, etc. This info typically isn’t that useful on its own, but it becomes more important as you’re able to tie it into other factors.
• Buying Behavior: How often do the customer place an order? Do they identify as first-time, regular customer, or a special occasion purchase? What is average order size? What do they buy? What are their preferred brands? Do they buy via online/in store/phone?
• Product Inventory: Note product purchased and associated profit margins with it.
• Customer Service Level: On a scale of 1 to 10, how much time/effort does that customer require? Some are notorious for quick and easy purchases, while others require quite a bit of hand holding. You should know associated ROI.
• Influence Level: As you capture email addresses, start capturing information regarding social media influence, as well. Identify who these people are online in order to understand how large their social networks may be. Your Influencers may require attention different from “regular” customers. When SouthWest recently made headlines for kicking director Kevin Smith off a flight, you can be sure he got special attention because of his social influence and because he was Twittering as things were unfolding.

Create your Personas

The information you collect should be used to tell a story about the different groups of customers who seek out your business. Once you can identify the “type” of customer you’re dealing with, it will help you understand the ROI associated with each bucket and provide insight on how to better address their needs. For example, you may find that you’re losing money by focusing on a segment that fails to convert or that you’d increase your ROI if you handled customer service via social media rather than email. To help you tie everything together, create tangible personas around your buckets.

For example, meet Joe and Sarah.

Joe is a 37-year-old male who considers himself “average” on the Web. He prefers to research online but make the actual purchase offline. He’s brand loyal and is willing to pay more in order to get service that he trusts. He owns a home in the nicer part of town. He doesn’t have an active social network and identifies as a Special Occasions Purchaser, spending several hundred dollars with each visit.

Sarah is a 19-year old female who identifies as “very savvy” on the Web. She does all of her shopping online and prefers not to shop instore. She makes frequent, small purchases about once a month and is very vocal with her social network about what she buys. She has 3,000 Twitter followers and has ‘fanned’ more than 100 brands on Facebook.

Put Your Buckets To Use

Once you’ve created your buckets, use them.

If you know that Sarah and Joe shop differently, then it doesn’t make sense to send them the same email newsletter. Instead, craft two that speak to their different needs. Sarah may be interested in weekly sales, however, Joe forgets about your company until the holidays roll around. It doesn’t matter how many emails you send him, he’s not going to buy. Segmenting also allows you to treat first-time customers differently than you do everyone else to increase your chances of getting that second sale. You can even segment emails down to particular product types. If Sarah has a history of purchasing a certain type of album, you may want to let her know when her favorite artist has a new release in.

You should also take your segments into account when dealing with customer service issues. Do this by assigning ROI to each customer type. Once you know the profit margin for each group, you’re able to make smarter decisions when assigning time and resources. If Joe and Sarah both have a customer service issue and you only have the resources to fix one, who’s going to bring you the most ROI?  No one likes picking favorites, but sometimes resources only flex so much.

Knowing who your customers are, what motivates them to buy and ROI in earning that sale, puts you in a better spot to market more effectively and customize what you’re putting out. When you get to know customers on a more personal level, it becomes easier to spot what will and will not work when talking to them. And, of course, by assigning certain personas to ROI groups it will help you to “fire” bad customers who become more of a resources drain than anything else. Not that we have customers like that.

From Small Business Trends

SMB Owners: Are You Segmenting Customers?