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came across this article about the ethics of ghostwriting for a client on Twitter (UPDATE: the previous link is no longer active – you can view the Google cache of the article here).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 [...]]]>

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came across this article about the ethics of ghostwriting for a client on Twitter (UPDATE: the previous link is no longer active – you can view the Google cache of the article here).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?