Leveraging One Twitter Account to Build Up Another

If you've gained traction with one Twitter account, you should think about leveraging that traction to promote another Twitter profile.  It's along the same lines of driving traffic across the web, just slightly more internal given both sites are within the Twitter microblogging platform.  One reason for doing this would be to build out your brand or the brand of a company you work for, offering a broader scope on the services you provide.

Most of you out there have more than one project you're working on.  Perhaps you blog for multiple sites, or perhaps you've got a professional blog and a personal blog.  Both are important to you, and both can use all the traffic they can get.  Now if you've spent the time to build up one Twitter profile, it's time to use your influence to drive traffic to the other.

You may be thinking--aren't we already supposed to be using Twitter to drive traffic to respective websites we find important across the web?  Absolutely.  But the specific act of using an influential Twitter profile towards building up another is a more direct utilization of your power.  Since you've got a good following, a slew of regulars that frequently read your tweets and respond with @replies or direct messages, you know that people will pay attention to what you're tweeting.  And if you gain additional followers because of the traction you've built up with one Twitter profile, you can take advantage of this initial Twitter introduction in order to point others in the direction of your newest Twitter account.

Use the credibility you've created with one Twitter account to encourage others to follow your other Twitter profiles.  Instead of merely following others via your secondary Twitter account in hopes of gaining new followers, let others know that this is yet another channel where they can follow YOU.  Send a direct message to new and existing followers of your primary Twitter account so they know about the latest Twitter channel you've set up.  Now, your secondary Twitter profile is no longer random to outsiders, but an extension of your established web presence.

Aside from direct messaging new and existing followers, there are a couple other ways in which to direct traffic to your secondary Twitter profile.

1. Put it in your bio.  There's only room for one hyperlink here but if your secondary Twitter profile is important enough, put it here anyway.
2. Create a Twitter background that includes your secondary Twitter profile URL.  Even though you can't add an active hyperlink to your Twitter background, it is one of the first things visitors see when they land on your profile and it's great for branding purposes.
3. Tweet yourself.  Link back and forth between your Twitter profiles with shared information, hyperlinks ore @replies.  This works best if at least one of your Twitter profiles isn't for personal purposes--you don't want people thinking you're talking to yourself.
4. Only follow your secondary Twitter profile.  This is a bit extreme and works best for highly influential Twitter profiles, but it's a very blatant way in which to show visitors that you only think a chosen few are worthy to follow, as these few are the only profiles that will appear on your primary Twitter profile.  We discuss this at length in our analysis entitled "When Twitter Users Are Too Special To Follow Anyone Else."

If you're wondering if leveraging one Twitter profile to build up another actually works, we're here to tell you that it does.  We practice what we preach here at MultiSocialMedia, and both Bob and I have taken advantage of our personal Twitter profiles and followers to help build up the Twitter account we designed specifically for The Twitter Survival Guide and MultiSocialMedia.com.

What we'd love to see in the future is a way to administer multiple Twitter profiles from a single Twitter account, similar to the way in which Wordpress allows you to create, access and administer multiple blogs from a single Wordpress account.  Seeing as Twitter is a blogging platform at it's core, this feature doesn't seem too far-fetched, especially when you consider how many Twitter users out there have more than one account.

Kristen Nicole is the co-author of the “Twitter Survival Guide.” With Bob Walsh, this ebook covers the history and social importance of Twitter as a web and mobile tool, and is the perfect resource for getting your Twitter account set up and ready for personal or professional use.