I recently came across this article about the ethics of ghostwriting for a client on Twitter (UPDATE: the previous link is no longer active – you can view the Google cache of the article here). The client is an executive who wanted several staff members to tweet from his personal Twitter account during a conference because he was concerned that he would be unable to keep up with all of the tweets that should be sent out throughout the day. The executive instructed his staff to provide disclaimers noting that some of the tweets were not his own; they did so, providing a reminder once in every ten updates. From the article:
“The executive wants his tweet stream to reflect his activity at the show, and to highlight other happenings at the conference, as well. He’s concerned that he won’t be able to support this many obligations.”
While I fully understand the importance of a consistent stream of tweets with information that is important and relevant to followers, it may be confusing to have multiple people tweeting from one individual’s personal Twitter account. A strong alternative solution would be to create a separate Twitter account specifically for the conference or for the issue. An account that is not associated with one person can be updated by a team because the account’s “followers” do not expect to see the thoughts and opinions of one person.
“For the record, there was no pushback from the executive’s followers. Anyone who took the time to react to our approach seemed to appreciate the fact that, for a short time, his tweet stream became a mix of on-the-floor reporting by the exec, supplemented by dispatches from a third-party response team in marketing.”
The disclaimer helps – but if I am following an individual on Twitter that is an executive of a company, I expect to see that executive’s thoughts and not the thoughts of their PR team. This raises the question – if a person doesn’t have time to tweet, is it misleading for that individual to have a team updating their personal Twitter account, even if they are telling that team what to tweet?
An executive that is telling their team what to update on their behalf still represents the thoughts of that executive. In this instance, the argument can be made that the person who is physically typing and sending the tweet is unimportant because their followers are still seeing the thoughts of the person associated with the account. It would be naïve to think that every personal account on Twitter is updated solely by that individual – but is it the hope of all their followers that it is that individual typing and sending the tweets? And with reporters and media outlets paying greater attention to Twitter, what are the ethical concerns regarding updates attributed to individuals that come from a team of professional communicators?
As the only ” twitter’er’ ” for an entire press, this post was incredibly interesting to me, even though our followers are not following me personally, they are following an entire organization, I still feel the need to let followers know if there is a new person tweeting the account say, at a conference that I am not attending, as the whole tone of a message can change with the person entering in the information.
Thanks for stopping by, Jenn! I’m curious – do your organization’s followers know that you’re the active voice behind the Twitter feed? If so, how do they know?
I agree that the tone of a message – especially one delivered in 140 characters – can change depending on who is writing it. That’s where the ethical question comes into focus. Personally, I don’t know that this is an ethical dilemma that hasn’t already been addressed for different mediums.
As an example, let’s look at this question in a different light. It is an accepted, common communications practice to craft messages or statements on behalf of a client, and have that client sign off on them. If this article were discussing a PR professional writing a statement on behalf of an executive, to be attributed to that executive as a direct quotation in a press release, would there be an ethical question? I would say no – as long as the executive signs off on the statement, there doesn’t seem to be much debate as to whether it is ethical that somebody else wrote it. Communications professionals regularly craft speeches and public statements on behalf of executives or organizational leadership, which are then delivered to the public as the executive’s own thoughts or perspectives. Again, we accept this as an ethical practice.
Is Twitter different? If it is, what makes it so?
Chris – that is a great question? Do our followers know who is behind the twitter machine? I would say about 80% of them do, as it is a small industry and we are all aware of each other and our roles within our presses. Since I am twittering for an organization instead of as a person I would say the other 20% do not, and most likely do not care who they are getting the info from as long as it is interesting an accurate. As it is a collaborative effort, we all contribute to content, but I am the only physical updater, if I were to go on leave, there would be a tweet, somewhere along the lines of… “Today your normal tweeter, Jenn will be replaced with…”, on my personal account it is only ever me, my followers are aware and it is almost never updated due to time constraints.
Back to the original discussion, I agree with the original post that it is naive to think that every personal account on twitter is updated individually, but I do find it unethical when it is not the person actually tweeting on a personal account. It is common knowledge that a press release is a crafted communications tool, however individual accounts on twitter, thus far are not commonly thought of as such.
We think that when we follow Ashton Kutcher, we are actually getting a glimpse into his own individual thoughts and message, if we were to find out that “Woke up feeling like some one hit me over the head with an Oscar. What’s Mike Tysons tiger doing here?” was actually written buy a staffer, it would damage not only Ashton’s credibility but Twitter’s as well.
How important is Twitter as a PR tool? are we all just tweeting to ourselves or does it truly drive a message to a broader audience? To me at times it seems a bit incestuous, but is that the case in every industry that is using it?
I agree Jenn, while it is naive to think that every individual we follow is personally updating their account we want to believe that we are getting an inside look at that individual’s thoughts and opinions each time we log on to Twitter.
I think when we hear or read more “traditional” methods of communication (press releases, public statements, speeches, etc) we expect that a team of communication professionals helped to craft the message. Maybe it was not always that way, but it is now an accepted and expected practice. Perhaps one day we will expect the same thing with Twitter, but for now it seems that some of us are holding out hope that the individuals we follow are taking the time to update their Twitter account personally.
[...] ConnectTweet allows groups or organizations to combine the voices of its employees into a central Twitter account. With ConnectTweet, multiple people can contribute to the organization’s Twitter account by adding a hashtag to their company-related tweets coming from their personal account. ConnectTweet grabs the tweets containing the relevant hashtag and posts them to the organization’s Twitter page along with the individual’s Twitter handle. This is a good way to avoid having a ghostwriter for your organization’s Twitter account (see my previous post: Ghostwriting for Social Media). [...]