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I'm looking to build a community based around several closely related themes/niches, but my diferentiating between myself and my community is clashing.

Let me use an example. There's a guy ( @John_Doe ), who talks about Gardening - And he has a community ( @The_Garden ) where he talks about Gardening. Now I can clearly see that he posts more on the community than on his own account, but it makes me wonder why he needs both.

Similarly, I have the same problem - I have an account about My_Niche, and my own Personal_Account, where I seemingly talk about things relating to My_Niche.

So why not get rid of my Personal_Account? Because I feel it nessessary to have it, which makes no sense! I feel that having a single account is wrong, yet having 2 accounts is silly.

Any advice on how I should go about structuring things? Or what the boundaries should be between each one?

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What makes you think you need any "boundaries" between usernames?

Usernames are free. As in "don't cost nothin'".

Who cares if one "person" has 1 username, or 100? So long as the behavior of each username is in line with the site guidelines - leave it alone.

Or, the reverse case, where you may have one "username" being used by multiple people (eg a corporate social media or blog account)?

Let people use whatever handle they want to use - it's not hurting anything.

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I would recommend that the accounts be kept strictly separate. On the private account you might want to share private stories, but the community is only interested in the niche. On the other hand, your private account might be followed by friends and family, who can't do much with the niche.

It is also more difficult to keep track of what topics have been written about on two or more accounts. And if the community should grow, it makes no sense to compete with yourself.

So, my recommendation is to keep the two accounts separate:

  • My_Niche: Only posts on the topic
  • Personal_Account: Only personal posts

Personal posts can of course also be "How I built a community for My_Niche".

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  • This is a good point. Essentially, you might have a personal website and a separate website for your company/organization/entity focused on a particular topic. While it might feel like unnecessary work to manage them separately (and there are tools to help with that), it makes it much easier to market your topic-focused account when it's not mixed in with your thoughts on politics, what you had for lunch, your sibling's wedding photos, etc. And nothing prevents you from using one account to retweet or share relevant content that was posted on the other account.
    – V2Blast
    Commented Feb 16, 2020 at 4:15

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