Tweeting after hours
As a household rule we say “no business tweets after 7pm” and it’s a household rule that’s often broken.
As much as I love my life as a business women and I love to use social media I feel sometimes I need to pull my business head off and place it into the freezer until suitable business hours.
For most, normal working hours are between 9-5pm and social media doesn’t take up many of those hours. Unless you own a social media business.
From 9-5pm 5 days a week all we do is tweet for ourselves and our clients. Now we aren’t the only ones. If you own a small business you may find social media taking a large chunk of your time up.
So should you set a stop time for twitter?
With most arduous business tasks we find it easy to switch off and leave them in the growing “to do” pile for later. But social media is a relatively new task that works a little differently. You can avoid your bookkeeping until a week before deadline. But social media is now!
I have often heard stories of small business owners neglecting their mobile devices to take a break from the Twitter world for the evening. More often than not their attempts at twitter freedom fails as endless notifications from the global “hours” brings the mobile device to life.
Can we escape the social aspect of social media?
The clue is in the name really, it’s social. If you associate your business twitter as a human identity (ie you manage your Twitter as yourself and the business, and the audience knows that) you are sort of expected to reply. After all, everyone knows you aren’t really sleeping at 7pm on a Tuesday night when Corrie is on.
At Lucky 6 we have a business Twitter and separate personal Twitter accounts. Lucky 6 falls silent around 6pm and from there only personal accounts are active. But it’s easier said than done!
Should we accept the inevitable fact that social media is taking over our lives? Yes.
Should you be known as a business that tweets at 11pm? Probably not.
Do you have a household rule for tweeting after hours?
