any further thoughts and ideas would be appreciated and maybe i can accumulate in another post…

as to personal vs professional - I tend to use tools like twitter for both… my work and my personal life blend into each other. As you build a community, I think people find it easier to relate to you when they have a peek into your personal life. I like the video you posted of listening to music because you forgot to turn off the camera… that was a peek into your life… some would say.. “that was Mel being Mel”

Another thing that just came to me it’s that maybe this needs steps.
First get the people promote it mainly in a personal way and then get it professional and give more power to the professional approach without leaving the personal one. Little by little give more power to the professional until both have some followers. If you change the person that is the contact then use the professional one to introduce the new person and also the old contact account to make it.

It’s easier to say than to do of course. People like to feel the approach of talking to someone with a name, a face and a personality than talking to a company. I think that as humans we are made to socialize with other humans and not with companies, so the personal part needs to be there all the time. The example i’m more familiar with is the Mahalo Daily one, which i followed particularly.

Thanks for the post Mel it gives the correct approach (at leat in my opinion).

I think it all comes down to trust. When I a receive a reply from a “company”, I always get the feeling of it being an autonomous being with only its own company interests in mind. To me that is the challenge of overcoming that feeling I am certain is in other people’s opinions.

So if the people that do the marketing leave the users will not necessarily leave too. Of course, some may leave or stop using the service, but some will stay and hopefully that person will be replaced with another one that will draw more people to the service or product.