Twitter Reform!

@JoshSkillman & @MylesTweetz

Good morning!  Hope that you have had a nice weekend.  I just finished up a 6 mile run and now Myles sits in my lap as I type my first blog post in a couple weeks. 

Twitter reform!  Despite my self-denial I knew that the day would come when I'd have to make a decision to more clearly define myself on Twitter.  Each day my personal world and professional world become more and more intertwined and it's becoming difficult to use Twitter the way I had intended, which was to freely express my opinion, sports rants, and political commentary.  I have struggled with this as I've read tweets from the people I follow in sports, the professionals I follow in the Student Affaris Community, and the friends and family that I follow.  Truly, I have three sets of audiences and my tweets are not always appropriate or relevant to all three.  You see, the friends who follow me follow me because they know me and they probably find the stuff I tweet funny.  However, the people from my professional life that follow me, but don't know me, may really not understand my tweets about IU, running, or just plain silliness.  It's tough for me to maintain my authenticity as an individual while at the same time maintaining my reputation as a professional on Twitter without an organized strategy.  So...yesterday I decided to change my Twitter approach. 

Like many others, I have decided to use Twitter in a more intentional manner.  Yesterday, I went through all the people I follow and who follow me and created lists that will better help me read through the information that is relevant and important.  I have a list for sports, friends and family, SA Professionals, news, and IUPUI HRL Staff.  Not only will this help me sort through information, but it also helped me realize that nearly 60% of my audience was from my professional community.  This was all the more reason to make this change.  Additionally, I have decided that my @JoshSkillman account will be used to share encouragement, information that is relevent to student affairs and running, and to share tidbits about myself that may reach my whole audience.  I have a Twitter account for my dog Myles, @MylesTweetz.  Myles (aka Josh with Myles on his lap) will tweet back and forth with my fellow Indiana fans during games and share some more traditionally "Josh" banter.  While I'm never going to want to stop tweeting about Indiana Basketball or quit sharing my opinions, I'm sure that some of the folks who follow me have stopped paying attention because they don't want to read about my thoughts on certain referrees or opposing teams.  This doesn't mean I won't tweet "Go Hoosiers" from time to time, but I won't be filling up the twitter feed with nothing but IU basketball stuff or tweets about random stuff. 

This has been an interesting decision that I have wrestled with for some time.  However, the more meetings I attend on campus where Twitter is mentioned and the more I hear about Twitter at conferences I attend, it has become apparent that people are going to read what I tweet and make a judgement call on it.  Therefore, I must make the change so that I don't cost myself in the long run and damage my professional reputation.  While for a long time I tried to ignore the power of Twitter and have tweeted whatever I wanted, it's become crystal clear that I must change up that strategy. 

I appreciate you taking the time to read my blog post.  Have a great day and happy running to you!