Sometimes, on Twitter (why haven’t you joined yet?!) you may have a good reason to have more than one account.
Possible examples include:
Real name + Pseudonym (either secret or publicly disclosed; or somewhere in between).
Multiple pseudonyms.
General account + specific purpose account (e.g. for Youtube, or for a journal you run).
These are only three possibilities; there may easily be others!
If you want to grow your followers, one key point is to divide your time properly between each account; I’ll let you deal with that one yourself!
But there are some other things you should know as well.
Here are some points about strategizing with more than one Twitter account.
It’s not forbidden, in principle, to have an overlap in followers or followed.
However, if two or more Twitter accounts of yours have too much of an overlap in followers, you may end up having too much content overlap.
So, if you want your account B to follow some of your followers on account A, it’s important to stagger your new follows over time; that way, you reduce the risk of having too much follow or content (i.e. tweet/retweet) overlap. Over time, each account should naturally diverge again, as you gain new followers.
Also, don’t follow or unfollow too many people at a time, as mass follows/unfollows can result in penalties.
Be patient!
If you have two accounts, it’s useful to try and maximize the chance of your followers knowing that your second account is run by the same person as your first account.
One way to do this is to have a pinned tweet, or at least top/most recent tweet, reminding people of the link between your various projects, or personas.
Another way is to edit your Twitter or other social media bios.
Yet another way is to edit your bios or ‘calls to action’ in articles you publish. Make sure you keep everyone informed!
Watch out for possible spam and bot accounts; be discerning. Work out where your boundaries are. Three possible ways:
i. Vet each account for relevant content.
ii. Vet each account for probably legitimacy.
iii. Follow all except ones that are embarrassing, by whatever criteria (e.g. porn or hate accounts).
iv. Follow all.
Be careful!
Some of the advice here is generalizable to other aspects of social media strategy; not only to the matter of managing multiple accounts. This being so, use both your critical thinking and your creativity, to succeed more and more with your social media use!