Social media silos

So I have a question.

What do you think about making each social media account hit a different niche? I’m talking about personal accounts, but we can discuss the institutional implications, too.

Institutional

At the Colorado Daily, I’ve assigned one reporter to mainly handle Twitter and one to mainly handle Tumblr. I mainly handle the Facebook page. Everybody checks in on Foursquare.

I like the consistency of voice you get from doing this — and the fact that developing relationships with readers and followers is a lot more natural. I think I want to play up the individuals more than I already do. Jenn is mentioned in the Twitter bio and Ashley is mentioned on the Tumblr page, but I think we can go further than that.

Naturally, you’re going to get different results with different people in charge of these things. Jenn, our outdoor recreation reporter, might post more outdoorsy stuff on our Twitter account (though I’ll tell you she does a great job of mixing it up) than if I were to run it. So it’s got her voice a lot of the time.

Personal

I’m on everything. Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, G+, Foursquare… you name it. And right now, I post a pretty reasonable cross-section of my interests on all of those, with an emphasis on Boulder, since that’s the focus of my job.

But does that serve my followers?

I gained the vast majority of my Twitter followers — I think — tweeting nearly exclusively about energy and environment issues. Does it bother them that I’m focused much more on Boulder (which happens to be a pretty green city)? I know I’ve unfollowed folks after they switch jobs.

So here’s my question: If I focus each account on a different niche I’m into, does that serve me and my networks better? Do I get a richer experience from that? Do I get more engagement?

Seems reasonable.

So I’m thinking about trying it out.

The plan, for now

Twitter: Boulder. That’s just where I’m most effective and where the largest number of voices interact with me. So it has to default to the thing I’m paid to do. And I’ve been here in Boulder and tweeting for two years — no sense in changing it up now. A huge number of the people I follow are based here, and I prune regularly. If I were to start over, I’d probably do it a different way and put my shoulder into the institutional account for local stuff and keep the personal account for broader things, since it’s so easy to interact with Twitter for national and international issues.

Google+: News of interest to the broader American West region, including environment, energy, immigration and pertinent features-y things. This is largely because I have no outlet for this other than pelting my wife with links — and because I want to see what I do with those topics and how they intersect.

Tumblr: Right now it’s just stuff I like looking at. It’ll probably keep being that way until I figure out something smarter to do with Tumblr.

Facebook: Pretty scattershot right now here, too. Plan TK.