Monday 22 June 2020

How to manage multiple Twitter accounts easily

There may come a time in your social media career where you look at your brand and wonder, “Is it time to create another Twitter account?” Having multiple Twitter accounts can be quite beneficial for many reasons.

Brands and organizations do not have to have a global presence or thousands of followers to need for multiple Twitter accounts. If you have a wide audience, multiple products or services or different departments with different goals, then multiple Twitter accounts might be your best solution.

While having multiple accounts may seem like it’s just creating more work for you, with detailed planning and thought, you’ll find that it helps you out in the long run. Your messages will land with the target audience you want

When to use multiple Twitter accounts

From your brand’s point of view, can you answer yes to any of these questions?

  • Have you written a Tweet where you wished you could target a more specific audience?
  • Has managing customer service inquiries taken up the bulk of your time on Twitter?
  • Do you have multiple locations or offices in different states, regions or countries?
  • Do you have a mascot that has its own fan base?
  • Do you have multiple products or service categories that are directed to different audiences?

If you answered yes to any of the above, then you might be in the market for another Twitter account.

Higher education

Colleges and other higher education institutions have many different audiences that they need to talk to. Multiple accounts help narrow down the focus and invite their followers to pick and choose which interests to follow along with.

The content and goals of an admissions department will be vastly different from the goals of the football team. The same goes for the differing audiences for department news, alumni communication and grad schools.

Marquette University manages 44 Twitter accounts with Sprout Social. The main Marquette account sifts through what is most important to share from the other accounts while they continue to post more specific content for their audience.

Multiple product & service lines

Do your different products and service lines serve significantly different audiences? If yes, then it’s time to create a new Twitter account.

Adidas created accounts for each of the sports that they participate in. The main account focuses on their brand messaging, storytelling and major partnerships while separate sports ones focus solely on that sport. If there was not an Adidas Wrestling account, then wrestling would be only a small focus of the main account. With this separation, Adidas Wrestling is able to talk about wrestling all the time and build up their community with a focus.

Customer service focus

According to the Sprout Index XVI: Above & Beyond, of the reasons social media users reach out to brands on social, 37% are focused on customer service issues, while 59% will reach out with praise after a great experience, and 23% for social connection or alignment with the brand’s belief.

index chart - why people reach out to brands on social

This speaks to the balance of demands placed on a social media team to respond quickly to all types of messages. It might be easier for a customer service team to manage product-centric comments and compliments, while a community management-focused team fields social and brand values-related posts. With that division of labor in mind, it might be the time to create that customer support Twitter handle.

As a national company, Verizon has its hands full managing the feedback and complaints on social media. For their customer service, they created a separate Twitter account to directly listen and respond to customer issues and questions.

Recruiting

Did your goal this year include more focus on hiring through social media? Let your recruiting department take the reins.

While the main account of Salesforce focuses on promoting their products, the careers account focuses on sharing notes about company culture. Salesforce has offices around the world. With a careers account, the recruiting department can easily share career advice and listen for potential applicants.

How to set up multiple Twitter accounts

Setting up a second Twitter account is just like setting up any other new account. But details matter. You don’t want followers to look at your new account and not immediately understand its purpose or connection to your main one. If possible, verify your other accounts.

Sprout twitter analytics

Check your resources

First, you want to make sure you have the resources in place to manage multiple Twitter accounts. Look at your audience insights and Twitter analytics to determine how much attention each account will need. Do you have the staff to quickly respond on all the accounts? Sprout’s Twitter report will easily distill this down for you.

Ensure a consistent visual brand across accounts

Next, you want your new account to be visually identifiable as a brand account. This is often done with similar logo usage and/or mentions in the bio section. Airbnb has quite a few Twitter accounts. In the above example, their Australia account uses the same logo as the main account so customers can easily identify it as a valid account. This step should be part of your larger social media branding strategy.

airbnb main twitter profile
airbnb australia twitter profile

Identify your brand voices

Finally, set up and define your brand voice. What are the absolute musts that your brand’s voice need to have across all platforms? Now how can these differ for your multiple Twitter accounts? For example the college admissions account should use more vocabulary and language that matches the voice of the students they are trying to recruit. The medical school account might take on a more formal, scientific voice.

How to directly manage multiple Twitter accounts

Decided that you want to have multiple Twitter accounts? The next step is to learn how to manage and analyze the different accounts.

Choose your social media management software

This is a very important first step. While Twitter’s native app and Tweetdeck both offer easy ways to switch between accounts, you will eventually need a management software that can easily publish content and sync across accounts.

composing to multiple accounts in Sprout

Sprout Social’s software is built to grow right alongside your brand. With different permissions and teams available, you can easily schedule one Tweet across multiple accounts within one window. In addition, a shared Asset Library ensures that you’re consistently on brand.

tagging in Sprout

Have a separate social customer service team? No problem. Any messages that come into the inbox can easily be tagged and reassigned to the right team. No need to log out of one account to respond as another. Customer service management should be this seamless so your team can focus on the care portion.

Create an internal approval process

With large and divided teams, you run into issues of making sure Tweets are on brand and timed correctly. How do you resolve this? Create an easy approval and assignment process.

approval process in Sprout

A unified calendar and draft review process in Sprout is as easy as a click of a button. With the publishing calendar, you’ll be able to easily see what’s scheduled among all of your accounts. If approvals are needed for some Tweets, then select it when you’re composing it.

tasks in Sprout inbox

When a Tweet comes in that asks about your product, which account and which team member should answer it? For some teams, someone is directly responsible for sifting through incoming messages and assigning them to team members. Then these team members are able to focus on crafting messages to customers instead of wading through noise.

Set individual goals & metrics

As mentioned earlier, having different Twitter accounts mean that you have different focuses. One account might want to increase brand awareness while another is more interested in increasing engagement with its current community members. Approach each new account like you’re approaching your overall marketing strategy and set up meaningful, measurable social media goals.

In the above example, ESPN and ESPN Fantasy Sports are very different. While they share the same brand, ESPN Fantasy Sports is far more interested in fantasy sports and creating a community around it than ESPN is. These different focuses require different metrics to measure their successes.

Analyze multiple Twitter accounts effectively

With goals set, the final step of the management strategy is to make sure these goals are getting reached. For the C-suite, you’ll want to have a birds-eye view of your entire brand. How has the brand been performing as a whole? Are there trends this month that weren’t there last month?

Sprout cross-channel report

The Sprout Profile report allows you to check off all your accounts in one report. The presentation-ready imagery mean you spend less time creating a spreadsheet and inputting data manually, or trying to translate that data into the ideal visualization.

Sprout twitter trends report

Seeing all your accounts together is nice, but even nicer is how narrowly you can focus in on your Twitter analytics. A single account report gives you details on what’s trending with your specific account. These details might not surface in your group report and they’re important to seeing how your strategy has performed.

Convinced that you need to set up a new Twitter account? Let Sprout Social guide you through the process with a demo.

This post How to manage multiple Twitter accounts easily originally appeared on Sprout Social.



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