Twitter: Business Name vs. Personal Name

It depends on what you want to use it for. Promotion tool or learning tool.
I use mine for a little bit of both so I use my pseudonym and promote my stuff sparingly.

I feel, the key to being a good twitter user is to not blast your followers with the same stuff over and over. It grates my nerves to see people do nothing but pimp out their work. They don't interact. They just broadcast.

Be real. Be yourself.

There is a plethora of good information out there, just like here. There's all sorts of people who want to connect with other writers, and readers want to connect with the writers. But you have to learn how to manipulate it to draw attention and not cause them to be pissed off and unfollow you.

I suggest using a different client than twitter.com too or else you'll sit there hitting F5 all day. I use Tweetdeck. Others may have a favorite.

I hope that's not too rambly.

I should say, I use a screen name and on my INFO I list my pen name. I have a weird thing about a certain level of secrecy about who I am and where I am when I'm online. Just weird that way.

I prefer it when people use their name (or a nickname that logically comes from their name). It means I can see who you are without having to visit your profile.

Brad said:

I've never twittered, and I only vaguely understand how it works.

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It's as exactly as simple as it seems. There's an AW thread of us who have posted we're on twitter, you can add people from there, unless it's like 800 and you add them all in an hour or so, then Twitter will consider you a spammer.

Brad said:

But there is so much buzz about how great of a networking tool it is, I am considering joining. If my goal is to gain a lot of followers to leverage my influence, would it be better to go with my real name or a pseudonym / business name? I am not sure I want to make myself "high-profile", but posting under a business name just seems kind of weird. I suppose part of it is that I don't understand the twitter "culture". Does the choice matter much?

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As far as online marketing/networking, Twitter is just "yet another tool" along with Facebook, LinkedIn, your own domain/website, and whatever else you use online.

If you've got both "personal" things to say, and some "business" thing you're doing, you might want to create two Twitter accounts. I've not done it but some guy who follows me said the one he follows me on is his third account.

If you're trying to get known as a writer or have your name be your "brand," then just get an account with your name. As popular as it is, you might have to be creative to create a unique twitter ID. I had to use two underscores in my ID:
http://twitter.com/ben__bradley

I just read some advice about this. The gist of it was: use your personal name over a business/pseudonym. People are interested in real people, not business identities. However, if you're publsihed under your pseudonym or know the pseudonym you're going to use, then that's you in the writing world. Use it. I think Brad X is more interesting that whatever business name you have, unless, of course, you use a pseudonym that's a personal type name. Then I won't know the difference!

Now, if you're referring to a business other than writing, I definately think you should use your real name. A real name also creates a sense of trust, cause it's being said from your mouth, and not some mysterious pseudonym. I agree with Polenth: I don't want to have to look at your profile to find your identity. Hope that helps