I just read a great biography on the actor, Peter Sellers called Mr. Strangelove. In reading about his acting greatness in playing multiple roles in the same film, I thought that this is similar to the challenge I have in managing multiple Twitter accounts. I was having a hard time keeping track of who I was talking as and at times I sent the wrong message not realizing which account I was logged into at that time. I can make you a bit manic depressive to say the least, quite like Peter Sellers.
Currently I have four Twitter accounts to manage. I have a personal account @bmcd67, two corporate accounts for Zencos @zencos and Site Dynamics @sidyn and one for the Triangle Chapter of the American Marketing Association @triangleama. I do not post everything on the corporate and AMA accounts as I have other staff/volunteers that assist with content and administration. But I would say that I am the “majority shareholder” on these accounts.
The two main challenges in any Twitter presences are content and frequency of communication. Additionally it’s vital to respond to messages directed at you in a timely manner. In both of these cases the challenge I faced was how to interface with all these accounts at the same time without having to
log in and
log out all day long to communicate. I ended up using the web browser interface for all
accounts except my personal one that I used
TweeetDeck for. However I was searching for a multiple account desktop Twitter tool but could not get
Seesmic and others to install and operate properly on
XP.
Well thanks to recent upgrade by TweetDeck, you can now manage multiple accounts in a single interface. TweetDeck has also added the ability to update Facebook status messages. Not sure if it allows for multiple FB accounts since I only have one! I am still working on creating groups for the different accounts since the main account is tied to my personal Twitter ID and feeds most of the good stuff like mentions and direct messages for the other accounts are not displayed. However the groups do allow me to track what the people I want to follow are saying in specific geographic or subject matter areas.
