When I got my copy of Klaus Eck’s book about online reputation management “Karrierefalle Internet” today I read the chapter about twitter right away and found the following tip on p.190:
Verzichten Sie auf Zweisprachigkeit in Ihren Tweets. Falls Sie in Englisch und Deutsch twittern wollen, empfiehlt es sich, dafür jeweils eigene accounts einzurichten.
Translation:
Avoid bilingualism in your tweets. If you want to tweet in English and German, you’d better set up separate accounts for that.
I’m tweeting in different languages, mostly English and German but sometimes in French and Italian too. And I’m even mixing the languages within the tweets sometimes. If I had to set up different accounts for each language it would get quite complicated to handle for me. And I know others do tweet in different languages from the same account too.
So I asked Klaus Eck via twitter why he wrote that and he replied it was “for clearer positioning and google effects“. He also told me that the tips in the book were meant for companies and that of course you can do whatever you like but that it wouldn’t be as successful then.
Okay, that’s all fine if you are a big company. But what about a one woman agency like me?
Being multilingual is part of my personal brand. I already have two different language versions of my regular website and when I set up my blogs I had to decide about the language too (see my previous post about multilingualism). I just do not have the time to keep up with two or even more twitter accounts!
Sure, this book is about active online reputation management (for companies).
But apart from that: is success defined by ranking positions? And will search engines always stick with the language definitions used now? Will we grow out of our google-position one day?
Well, you know what I think! Tweet in all your languages — and tools like Twitter should at some point integrate better language management:
- language detection (easy, even on 140 chars, if you know my tweets are either en or fr)
- language preferences (show me tweets in these languages, show me tweets in all languages, don’t show me tweets I don’t understand)
Seesmic does this quite well.
And I agree with your “apart from that”. Ranking is supposed to reflect your success, not define it.
Hi Annette,
I am a bilingual blogger and have been “mixing” my efforts across languages now for years and there have been no problems whatsoever – especially when it comes to blogging – I had a special plugin made to help organize my content that is working very nicely and many other fellow bloggers have installed in onto their WordPress Blogs.
Now coming to Twitter, I use it on and off as well and mix my tweets and there again there are no problems – the number of followers continues to increase at a slower rate that I would like, but that is mainly due to the fact that I simply do not tweet enough.
- Is success defined by ranking positions?
No. Vice versa the ranking position is a consequence of your success.
- And will search engines always stick with the language definitions used now?
The more people we have online the more this topic will become ‘hot’. I guess that there will be an evolution.
- Will we grow out of our google-position one day?
I really hope so!
Andrea
P.S. Tweet in many languages as you want. I do it. I actually think that it’s a plus being able to manage the conversation in multiple languages at both personal and professional level.
Thank you all for your encouraging words! I definitely will go on to tweet in different languages!
@Stephanie: Yes, the tools should adjust to the competence of the users nit the other way around.
@Sante: Is there something like a should be rate of increasing follower numbers on twitter? I prefer to develop organically instead of pushing followers and rankings.
And @Andrea: I totally agree with you: tweeting in many languages shows your competence and professionality!