Humanizing your Twitter brand

One of the last social media stories of 2011 told of a company suing the guy who used to run its Twitter presence because he took the account's followers with him when he left the job. The questions that raised, along with my colleague Jillian Kurvers' earlier take on whether marketers should handle their own Twitter accountsor engage an outside agency, got me thinking about the literal face of your Twitter account. Many companies have no face at all—the tweets are from "the brand," with no indication of the person behind the keyboard. Often a company's execs will use their personal accounts to cheerlead about the brand. Although that human-to-human interaction may provide the best "social engagement," having a brand-based identity is valuable for at least three reasons:

• It's easier to find. Not everyone will think to search for your vice president of development's feed. They'll be looking for your company name.
• It's an information hub. Large enterprises might have a dozen people tweeting about the company and the market niche. For specific announcements and news, though, you expect a corporate site to aggregate it.
• It's permanent and controlled. When employees leave, they take their accounts with them. A former employee may shut down the account, stop tweeting about your market niche, or even start tweeting about the rival company he or she just joined. A corporate identity is yours, even through staff changes. And you don't have to fight for it in court.

But there's one challenge to "@companyname" versus "@companyperson." If the face of your account is your logo rather than, you know, a face, how do you successfully engage in the most personal and identity-driven form of marketing since door-to-door? It's no problem when the tweet is "Hey, watch our new video" or "Attend our free webinar." But what happens when it's more personal? Companies large and small have dealt with this potential social disconnect in a variety of ways. Here are a few:

Allstate tweets as a single entity (@allstate), but its page posts names and photos of the six-person team behind the tweeting. Generic announcements of contests and such go unsigned, but tweets directed at individuals or with a personal flair are initialed. It makes a big difference when the tweet responding to a problem and offering direct contact for resolution comes from an identifiable human rather than a cipher behind a logo. In a sort of inverse, Michelle Obama initials all the tweets that are actually from her. Tweets without her initials are sent out by anonymous staffers. Either way, it's about authenticity and the human touch.

Social media marketing house Radian6 names its Twitter attendants in its profile (@Radian6) and posts their active hours. Is it weird to think of something on the Internet being "closed for business"? Maybe, but at least the company lets followers know when they can and can't expect responses.

Intel tells you who its three tweeters are (@Intel) and links you to their personal Twitter accounts as well, but there's no way to tell who's tweeting what on the main Intel feed. Because Intel's stream is fairly impersonal, even by B2B standards, knowing who's typing each tweet seems less important. 

But @CiscoSecurity names the marketing manager behind the account as Jason Lackey, who runs it with a mix of announcements and interesting security-related links. The recent content I scanned was not much more "personal" than on Cisco Systems' main feed (@CiscoSystems is as impersonal as @Intel), but just having a name made those "hey, interesting reading" links more appealing to me.  

There are different uses and strategies behind a Twitter account, especially when you're coordinating your brand identity with other, human-identified accounts, so there's no one correct approach. And norms change.  People become used to the idea of "companies" tweeting. I turn the question to you—should a brand's official Twitter account identify its humans or keep them anonymous? If it depends on circumstances, which circumstances persuade you one way or the other?