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14 Comments

Using personal or project Twitter account?

When you build in public do you use your personal account and tweet about what you're building or do you use an account specific to your project (and possibly RT it from your personal account)? Why do you choose to do it that way and not the other?

  1. 5

    I think it totally depends on the overlap between your personal audience and your customers. In my case, one project is a 100% potential overlap, the other is next to 0%. So I alternate whether I focus on the personal Twitter vs. using the brand one.

  2. 4

    Use both and retweet each other.

    Tweet product specific things from the project account and retweet from your personal.
    And tweet things about the journey of building the project from your personal account and retweet from the project account.

    This way both accounts help build each other up. This is what I do for HyperCharts.

  3. 3

    Personal. Please. Unless your personal account is full of political opinions and inappropriate social content (e.g. unprofessional TikTok stuff, getting drunk, going to Mardi Gras, etc.).

    A real human being's face helps to build trust more than anything else -- who in the hot springs likes to interact with a logo?

    You can definitely brand your profile with references to your project (in fact, put it in your name even), along with a whole host of other things you can do to optimize your Twitter profile before you even start tweeting.

    See: The Ultimate Guide to Optimize Your Twitter Profile for More Followers and Conversions (Examples Given)

  4. 1

    An official one.

    We're wondering if we can make the "brand" alive on its own, so it's a bit of an experiment.

  5. 1

    I found better results when using my personal account. It seems like most people you follow will take a look at your bio and still checkout your site and follow you back.

  6. 1

    I use my personal account all the time and I suggest you do it as well.

    At the end of the day, you’re the major asset of your product. People follow you and your stories not only you had a great product but also what you do and who you are.

    One day you will have more than one product, you will realize the advantage to centralize content on your personal account. I did the same when I launched a side project two months ago. I’m enjoying it ;)

  7. 1

    For building in public definitely the personal one because product/company accounts are "faceless" and not relatable. They are for support requests and release notes.

  8. 1

    I'm planning to build in public using my personal account for my next project. I don't think there is enough overlap between my personal audience and my new project's future audience for it to make sense to tweet about it from the project account.

  9. 1

    I mostly use my personal Twitter, but have also been growing my business account as well. I think building in public tends to work better on personal, whereas people that just want major product announcements are more likely to follow a business account.

  10. 1

    i use the project's twitter handle... for now.

    i've changed my thoughts on this over the years, so, i don't think there's a "best practice" any more.

  11. 1

    I struggled with this too, but I think personal is better for engagement and leveraging your audience across projects.

    It also provides a nice human element.

  12. 1

    Use personal account, compound across projects, keep it focused!

  13. 1

    I'm planning to start Building in Public with my new project (as soon as I can get the LP ready to start gathering email addresses while I build) and I'm debating back and forth between using my personal account (with a following) vs trying to build up a following on the "official" account for the project.

  14. 6

    This comment was deleted 7 months ago.

    1. 1

      It is the era of personality, so definitely do it under your name. People love to know who is behind those words, see a face, and interact with you. I bet you'll grow much faster being personal :)

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