Should you Tweet as yourself, on behalf of your employer, or both?

Last night at the SunTweet in Park City (#suntweet), part of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival — a great event that raised about $600 for a girl named Serenity who suffers from Leukemia — a question was asked of the panelists that sparked some discussion.

The question, by @UtahNewsSource, went something like this:

I notice that most of you use Twitter handles that are your name and not your employer’s name. Is there a reason for this? And what would you recommend to someone who has two separate Twitter accounts, one for personal tweets and another for business?

My mind went back to Dec. when I blogged about personal versus corporate brands.

And my thought process went something like this:

If you’re a company, you’re foolish not to reserve your company or product’s name in Twitter (for example, check out the Exxon Mobile brand hijacking story).

If you’re a public relations or marketing professional, you’re foolish not to reserve your own name on Twitter, just as you should register your name as a domain.

When I choose to follow Twitter users, I give preference to people with real names and not companies and nonsense names like PinkBunny (I just checked to see if that was a real Twitter name, and it is; apologies to you, PinkBunny).

Many companies — Comcast, Dell and Zappos, to name a few — do tweet using their corporate name, but they have a real person and face behind the Twitter account. People know they’re talking to a person at that company.

If you step back and look at this scenario from a branding perspective, I believe it’s easy to see the value in at least owning the Twitter handles for your company and product names. It’s also easy to see why it’s important to reserve your own name as a Twitter account.

But how you use those accounts is really up to you.

I use several Twitter handles — for the various companies I operate, and for various clients.

In fact, if you’re in a similar situation, with several different Twitter accounts, I recommend Tweet Later for managing them all from one location.

Also, if you’re looking to build-up your Twitter presence, a very useful site is Mr. Tweet. It’s billed as your personal networking assistant. The site analyzes your existing Twitter account, those you follow, and recommends other influencers you should be following.

And while I’m talking about Twitter, let me just say that I don’t see a value in those robot generated replies that so many are using when they get a new follower. It’s like having an out of office reply always set on your email. I think it’s annoying.

I find much more value in a response from a human that points out something they saw on my website or shares valuable information.