When hiring someone to design your business card for you, you typically tell them to include your basic contact information. The same basic information is usually seen on most business cards, showing your name, title, company, phone number, mailing address, and email address. You might have a fax number on there too.
This may seem sufficient for most purposes, but what if your potential customers and business associates would prefer to contact you via Twitter. We all know that Twitter has become a huge cultural phenomenon, being adopted by actors and politicians alike, but is it appropriate to include your Twitter username on your business card?
The answer would depend on the nature of your business and the nature of your Twitter account. If you are using a Twitter account for business purposes, this might make sense. However, if your Twitter account is mostly personal, you may want to give this some serious second thought, just as you would necessarily share your Facebook account with your boss.
If you do choose to include Twitter information your business card, the best practice might be to provide the username for the company’s corporate Twitter account rather than your personal one. You wouldn’t put your home phone number on your business card, so your “home” Twitter account should be no different.
Minnesota Attorney
November 1, 2009 8:41 am
Your post raises the challenging issue of dividing a personal and professional life online. Twitter can be used for professional and personal purposes, so I have two accounts at Twitter. LinkedIn is solely professional, so I have one professional account there. However, Facebook is more challenging. When business clients started “friending” me on Facebook, I decided to set up a professional account that didn’t have photos of my kids and other private details. But the two profiles was confusing to my friends because Facebook kept asking them if they wanted to be my friend (Facebook suggests friends it thinks you know), and then friends were confused about why I had two profiles. It will be interesting to see how online social networking evolves and how these issues are addressed.
Edward
November 2, 2009 1:29 pm
everyone should be acquainted with the modern technologies. I think that phone numbers and e-mail address is not enough nowadays. A typical visit card may also include Twitter username.
Edward
November 2, 2009 3:01 pm
It is hard to keep the two seprate, but I dont worry about it much
Rhetorical
November 2, 2009 3:11 pm
You bring up an interesting point. I see a lot of people with separate Twitter accounts, but the same thing doesn’t seem to be as commonplace on Facebook. I wonder why.