Thoughts buzzing in my brain this afternoon center around the question of content authenticity. The New York Times was one of many media outlets to post articles recently on the uncovering of ghost writers in the Twitterverse. "When Stars Twitter, Ghosts are Lurking" by Noam Cohen sheds light on the true "voice" behind the 140 character messages tweeted by 50 Cent, Britney Spears, Kayne West and others.
The question becomes do we really care? I have written many times regarding my strong beliefs in personal branding and having a unified message that is consistent with how one wants to be represented in the world. This is especially true for individuals who are considered public personalities. Messages on Twitter should all be part of the promotion package: the well-oiled machine that keeps them large and bold-faced in the comment cloud of net existence. If the personality is unable to keep the machine running on their own and needs to hire a staff, then so be it. The lack of "authentic" voice may or may not be a problem for the follower depending upon what the follow relationship was at the start.
What happens though, when ghost-twittering becomes a bigger business, with those talented with type, taking on several clients at a time? Will they be able to keep their "brands" straight without crossing backgrounds or messages? The following quote from the NY Times article was stated by Annie Colburn, a free-lance writer and one of the two ghost Twitterers for noted New Media Consultant, Guy Kawasaki:
“I don’t think I could ghost Twitter for 100 people,” she said. “More like 10 clients. I think I would have to get to know them.”
Wow! Talk about dilution of brand equity! If we ever do get to the point where writers are handling mass numbers of clients' daily tweets and losing the essence of who they are, then we might as well all click the unfollow button. And for the record, I would hope that a ghostwriter of any sort would "know" their client.
Here are some thoughts that I had in response to a blog post entitled Social Media Authenticity on the Newmediacy Blog:
You raise some great questions here. For me, the authenticity becomes key dependent upon who is "speaking" or disseminating the information and what my relationship is to the speaker. I have no problem with a "personality" using a staff of ghost writers, assuming they are fully aligned to the essence of their subject.....Read the rest of my comment post here.
I see communication as two facets in my life: the first as a method of basic information sharing and the second, as a genuine exchange of ideas, sentiments, and debate between two authentic people having forged a real connection. Social Media is all about making that connection; for it is in the exchange, that change occurs and the evolution continues.
What do you think?
Copyright Michelle Beckham-Corbin 2009
3 comments:
I especially noticed how quickly pundits leapt on to Guy Kawasaki for using ghosts (when they only represent a very small percentage of his tweets) - as if they were trying to justify the practice! Twitter is one form of social media that loses something in the translation to a business platform if it is not done very carefully. And the personal brand is corrupted if someone else wholly unconnected with the person is repping them in cyberspace. Unfollow in droves, I say!
Thanks Jeanne & Tessa for reading the post and taking the time to comment!
A very interesting post. But what about when pretending to be the CEO of a small business where the product is him as a teacher? Doesn't it establish a ingenuous relationship to have his name on the blog, his personal facebook profile, linkedin profile, and twitter account.
But people like thinking that it is him and not the company, even though the social media team is behind all of the accounts. Once it is established though, how do you switch over so that the tweets and pages are from the company/brand and don't have one person's name on them anymore?
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