So, a while back I weighed the options of creating a work-based Twitter account. I struggled deciding between creating one based on work vs. adding work content to my personal one.

All in all I decided against combining my personal account with work tweets. I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that I still use Twitter to talk to friends about whatever. There’s nothing really engaging to it.

Work twitter was the way to go I decided.

Well before you read any further, this post isn’t a retrospective on how I made it successful. Or about  how I have a healthy amount of followers and have engaged an audience in my brand or whatever blahdyblah.

I didn’t, at least in my opinion.

This post is about why it failed so far. Also hopefully about what I can do to make it better.

So let’s look how many tweets I’ve offered up since I started this little sojourn on February 24. 106.

My last tweet on that account was a resounding 20 days ago.

Here it was:

Warming up for the #Flyers game tonight by listening to Warren Zevon youtube.com/watch?v=eUb0C0…

— JonCCT (@JonCCT) May 1, 2012

Pretty poor stuff looking back.

The only real success of the account was when I live tweeted the Oscars from my desk. That was planned and the original intent of starting the account. That actually worked out well, much better than I imagined in fact getting some feedback from readers and engaging in a few conversations.

Since then though the account has totally fallen by the wayside. Thinking about it recently, here are a few reasons that perhaps can be done to make things a bit better:

1) Downright laziness. I’ll be the first to admit it, I never really made time to tweet in my daily schedule, but there is certainly enough time for it. That’s on me. Hell, just even thinking about needing to schedule time to tweet is probably an issue.

2) An apprehensiveness to tweet. I’ve found myself working a breaking news assignment, and tweeting it is the absolute last thing on my mind. Part of it is just that I’m trying to get everything else straight – those of you who have done breaking news and being the only reporter out there know, there’s a good bit to get done, tweeting is not at the top of the priority list.

3) Not feeling like I’m even ready to start tweeting. This I guess ties into the last point, but I find myself not wanting to tweet oftentimes because I just don’t feel I’m really ready to start building that following and engaging readers. I find myself thinking that I came in a bit too strong and ambitious, only to find that there’s still quite a lot of work to be done on absolutely mastering the basics until they’re like unconscious clockwork. Tweeting was never a part of that repertoire for me.

Looking back, I think it was maybe the wrong move to create a work account, juggling two accounts, especially since I’m not even the most active of tweeters, was a bit much. I also think that tweeting in an official capacity takes a bit more courage, knowing the minute you put it out there – you’re open to a whole boatload of criticism.

As to actually making this work, I guess we’ll have to see. The area I’m in isn’t exactly an area which uses Twitter as their preferred social network, but now that summer and tourism season is upon us, there could be a lot more potential.