Face it, you're talking to a person

Face it, you're talking to a person

An interesting tweet relating to Hubspot’s findings that those with a Twitter avatar displaying a photo stand to gain ten times as many followers as those without, kicked off a healthy debate which prompted me— the Marketing Donut Twitterer — to question whether I should come out from behind the logo and show my face. If it wasn’t already conflicting enough to know whether ‘I’ am in fact a ‘We’ during commercial tweeting hours, this dilemma hits me. It was almost enough to induce a psychotic episode.

There are valid reasons for presenting the Marketing Donut as a face. It could produce tangible gains in number of Twitter followers and the quality and quantity of interactions. But when you communicate with @MarketingDonut - or any of the Donuts for that matter -  you may not always be talking to the same person. Holiday leave, sickness and just being plain busy can often mean a personnel shuffle when it comes to Twitter. Without blowing the lid on the Twitter Magician’s code here at Donut Towers, we try to maintain the same team member on each Donut account for reasons of continuity and to give each Donut its own distinct personality. But, as the theatre waiver goes, the performance may be subject to last-minute cast changes.

On the whole, it is me  - James Ainsworth - behind the tweets and if you were to DM the Marketing Donut, characters permitting, I would sign off as ‘James’. But I hope you enjoy following the Marketing Donut Twitter account for a plethora of reasons, not least for the content we share but for that little sparkle of personality that comes through every day.

The salient point from the discussion was made by @benparkatbjs, “Surely it depends. If a one-man band, tweeting with your own pic is fine, but if you're a donut, surely donut logo better?” 

In a recent blog post written by Jan Minihane on the topic, she rightly points out that face value is better for individual accounts. But Jan also concludes from further discussion with her Twitter following that corporate accounts with multiple staff should “Use your logo as you are promoting the corporate brand, not an individual. (unless most of the brand value is you, in which case you may want to go with a picture of yourself).”

And what of the deliberate tactic deployed by @web_D, “I have used really small text and oversized logos to encourage people to click and see the full version”?

Should the Marketing Donut — as a publisher of resources for small businesses — be identifiable by the branding that has been created already or -as a mainly one man Twittering band - should I have my world-weary face as the avatar, bedecked with some kind of Marketing Donut insignia or, if you please, a Twibbon?

If you really want to see me on Twitter then you can follow me here but don’t expect such useful small business marketing advice. You have been warned!

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