Professional vs. Personal Twitter Handles: What's the Difference?

ByAbby Rechel
ar367711@ohio.edu

In today’s world of journalism, the largest form of communication is through social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and many more. A broad range of users, junior high students to senior citizens, use these outlets to connect with family members, friends, neighbors, communities, professionals and even the nation as a whole. Users can stay up to date in almost everything including current events, world news, family Christmas parties or a neighbor's experience at the grocery store. In my eyes, it is up to the owner of the account to choose how the account will be handled, professionally or personally.

For some users, such as WJTV-TV anchor Erin Pickens, multiple social media accounts are created. Two accounts are used for professional use, and the other two for personal use. On the professional accounts, she tweets and posts about current events and local news stories. The link to Pickens' account can be found here. On the personal accounts, she tweets and posts about her family and friends. Each of the accounts has a separate following. On the professional side, co-workers, the news station, locals and other reporters follow her to gain information on current events. On personal accounts, she may tweet about her day, her family or a humorous story.

I agree with Pickens’ way of dividing account information into two different outlets. I follow the same system with my Twitter accounts. My professional account, pictured to the right, is used to tweet and retweet about Ohio University, E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, Robert Stewart and the beautiful campus of Ohio University. My personal account, found below, is used to tweet about my love for the Dave Matthews Band, bar tending at The CI and delicious quesadillas while also sharing my hatred for Miley Cyrus and the cold winter months. There is a fine line between what should be shared professionally and what should be shared personally.

It is important for students, especially Ohio University E.W. Scripps School of Journalism students to uphold the professional expectations on their social media accounts, both professional and personal. Below is a link leading to Smashing Magazine’s website to an article titled, “We Can Do Better: The Overlooked Importance of Professional Journalism.” The article lists tips for Twitter users to maintain a professional Twitter. Examples include, writing in positive terms, using correct grammar and punctuation, originality and verification. Many students do not realize the amount of people that may be reading their tweets. Anyone from the CEO of a company to their grandma could end up reading about how "this biology class is f***ing awful." To take the safe route, we should follow this rule: if you even have to slightly question whether or not to post or tweet something, do not post or tweet it.

The link to Smashing Magazine's article can be found here.


Images from Google.com