Where do I tweet? My personal account or a separate one?

This is something I’ve been asked about blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc. My advice is that you ought to keep a professional brand out there for yourself.

I have two accounts, one for me personally (@way0utwest) and then one for my site (@SQLServerCentrl). The company site definitely gets less time from me than my personal account. I rarely sign on to the company account away from my PC, so it’s hard to maintain.

I’m not sure I’d want a separate account for Twitter for me as a programmer, because it could be hard to maintain, and hard to manage. It would be easy to tweet something from the wrong account.

What I would do is keep my business social media separate from my personal media. Twitter is a blend for me, since I have mostly business friends on there. It evolved that way, and while I post some family/kid things, I do try to remember that the audience is technical people.

For Facebook, and my personal blog, I have set those to be family items. I might cross post to/from this site, but it’s about me, not my work. I have kicked off my Facebook friends that I don’t know personally well, so it’s now a personal site.

LinkedIn is completely business. I don’t connect with friends there, unless we have a business purpose.

Marketing yourself

One of the things that needs to be a part of your modern resume, is a way that you market those things you do for your career. Whether it’s the book you’ve read on your specialization, a class you took, a blog you wrote, or a speech you gave, at some point you need to introduce some marketing to let others know what you’ve done.

I’m fairly humble, and uncomfortable with awards and recognition. I don’t like talking about what I do, or have done, most of the time if it’s self-promotion.

However the place where it is appropriate is where you can, and should, is when you are trying to get a new job, or impress your current employer. If you are a consultant or contractor, then this is almost constantly, but if you are an employee, you need to learn to do this when it matters.

That’s not every day or every week, but it does mean that you need to prepare every day or every week by documenting you efforts, blogging, volunteering, etc. and having that effort ready to show when you look for when you need it.