Eggblogg

Is it OK to ghost for a client on the social web, and other identity issues

In terms of the identities of the people behind them, what's the difference between a Twitter feed, a Facebook page and a LinkedIn profile?

A LinkedIn profile is generally speaking unique to an individual. A Twitter feed, however, may be one of several operated by the same individual, or a single feed that's actually written and managed by a number of people. A Facebook profile page is specific to an individual (I may be wrong, but personally I don't know of anyone who operates more than one Facebook profile). A Facebook page, however, represents a business, which means one or more people may be contributing to the authorship of the page.

Given that transparency and disclosure are paramount on the social web, how do you successfully manage these various scenarios?

Multiple user/single representation

In the case of a 'celebrity' or otherwise busy/famous person, agencies or assistants are often assigned the task of managing his or her Twitter feed. I'm not too concerned with that here. What's more interesting (and more commonplace) is when a business or organisation has a 'corporate' Twitter account.

For example, let's say a small business has a Twitter profile called 'TopFlowers'. Top Flowers has 3 members of staff with the responsibility to tweet as TopFlowers. How does the company ensure appropriateness, consistency and effectiveness of tweeting, without masking the individuality of each contributor?

I'm a big advocate of having a human face as your Twitter profile, but this might be a case that calls for the company logo or a representation of its product(s). Counter the anonymity of this by making it clear in the biog that the feed is managed by Julie, Betty and Peter, with perhaps a bit more about them in the Twitter page background. Larger companies tend to do this, see for example Comcast.

Make sure the staff members are clear on the purpose of tweeting and what is expected of them when they are the face of the company. This is a tricky area and the Social Media Business Council has an excellent Disclosure Best Practices Toolkit for download here. At the same time, give them activity goals, or get them to generate their own, designed to meet your objectives. For example, to do with finding suitable people to follow, conversations to monitor and/or take part in, useful resources or promotional ideas. Encourage them to say who they are, not necessarily with every tweet but regularly enough, so that people know who they are speaking with.

Single user/multiple representations

There are several reasons why one person may be running more than one social media persona. Perhaps they want to keep their private/personal life separate from professional. Or they may have more than one business, each unrelated to the other. The first is the one I hear most often. 'I don't want my customers/suppliers knowing that my child has got measles' or whatever. I have some sympathy with this.

Personally, I keep my Facebook account for communicating with family and friends, and deliberately don't 'befriend' my purely business contacts. But then again, I wouldn't be embarrassed by anything on my Facebook page should a client see it. My Twitter feed is most definitely a mix of professional and personal. I know I'm always saying it, but 'people do business with people', and social media is about being yourself, you just need to use common sense and good judgement.

One person or company may be managing several accounts on behalf of various clients (ghosting). Is this an issue? It's standard practice in many areas of marketing, but on the social web it could cause a problem, given that we're talking about real time, unscripted interaction. A company CEO may get questioned about something he 'said' on Twitter in the same way he could about something he said in a press release. The debate about the ethics of ghost writing is a lively one.

On the internet, consistency and honesty are rewarded with trust, and anything that smacks of a cover-up is to be avoided, even if nothing untoward is intended. As Mark Twain said, 'if you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything'.

What do you think - how should a company manage its online persona? Is it OK to ghost for a client? Do you keep personal and professional identities separate?

A little anecdote about Twitter

I had a go at O2 recently for not acknowledging customer complaints on Twitter, and it's an ongoing mission of mine to convince people that if social media is about conversations, the very least a business can do is to throw its Twitter followers the odd bone, yet so few do this.

This is an extract from the outtakes of a Twitter video recently shot by Lucy Waters in which she interrogated me about various things Twitter. I just thought it was a quick example worth sharing.

On robots, road rage and why faces matter on Twitter

I saw a TV ad last night that got me thinking. The ad, for AXA Insurance, features people barging into each other on the street, pushing each other out the way and yelling abuse at strangers. The idea is 'you wouldn't behave this way on foot, so why would you do it when you're driving?'

Now I don't think I'm the sort of person to behave rudely on the road, and I've never suffered from road rage. But I do get 'customer service rage' from time to time - and it's invariably brought on by the feeling that I'm not dealing with a real person. I suppose that's what happens to drivers who get angry with others - perhaps they see the vehicles but don't connect them with actual people, and the anonymity that the cars provide is a kind of cushion. ("I don't care what they think, they don't know me and I'll never meet them face to face.")

When it comes to email, customer service replies are quite often automated, or near enough (to a standard template with 'insert case number here'.) People working in call centres abide by a script and are often unempowered to deviate from that. Although I know that it's real people who answer the phones or (sometimes) trigger the emails, I am enraged by their anonymity, their inflexibility, and, if I'm honest, the whole cultural premise that the standardisation of customer service and the reduction of humans to little more than robots is a desirable thing.

There was an example of this today on Twitter. I noticed an argument brewing between O2 and @bengillam who claimed they didn't adequately respond to tweets. I joined in the discussion - having contacted O2 through Twitter several times over the Christmas period to complain that their '12 Days of Christmas' promotion included an invalid 'opt out' number, and having had no reply.

O2's position was that they can't be expected to respond to all the tweets they receive, as there are so many. Why not? Is that also their attitude when a customer writes them a letter? Why isn't a company the size of O2 employing enough people to 'man the Twitter deck' - Dell can do it, and so according to Ben Gillam can Vodaphone and even BTCare.

I do think that if you're going to use Twitter you need to be prepared for what it will unleash. Alternatively you could make it clear that your twittering staff aren't there to perform customer service, but rather to broadcast offers, information or updates. If you state what you're able to cover and are honest about it, that's surely less aggravating than saying "Let's talk - we're happy to help where we can!" as O2 say on their Twitter profile.

Another way of diffusing disgruntled customers is to personalise it. Drop the anonymity, forget the scripts and the 'is there anything else we can help you with?' bullshit. Remove the 'corporate' veneer, show faces, use real names, listen, do something to show you're human, and it's surprising how less inclined people are to get bolshy in public. Because that's what these conversations are on Twitter - visible to all.

Large companies CAN do this - look at the twitter page of Frank Eliason, Senior Director of National Customer Service Operations for Comcast. Now I don't give too hoots whether it's actually Frank replying to everyone, or even whether that's Frank in the photo (although I'd be a bit sad if it wasn't). My point is that it looks and feels like real, human customer service.

Am I being over-sensitive? Is it unreasonable to expect corporates to have got their act together when Twitter is still such a new tool and we're all still figuring it out? Are employers requiring humans to behave more like robots and if so, isn't that ironic given the amount of time being spent on trying to create robots that have even a fraction of the intelligence of a human being?

'How to ...' two short words you can't resist

Just how seductive is an article that starts with 'How to ...'? It's a tried and tested technique - not new, not particularly clever, not sophisticated, but I fall for it time and time again. And I know I'm not the only one. Why?

• I'm looking for a quick answer to something I know I ought to know but haven't had time to learn
• I want to know if what I do know is complete and up to date
• I want to check out just who this person is who knows 'how to ....'

It's a close relative of the 'Three reasons why ...' It's really tempting to just take a peek, even if you suspect it's just some copy writer's trick to get you to read. Course, once you do read it, if the information is good/new/useful, you might just subscribe to the blog. If it's a let-down, you may not respond the next time. So it pays not to 'cry wolf'.

Anyway, I've come across some very good 'how tos' lately, so there may be something here that interests you:

How to write effectively for Twitter and the Social Web - this is a massive list of resources, more of a library to bookmark than an article to read.

How to find industry influencers - some solid advice here, and well illustrated

How to get more comments on your blog - ha! I definitely should take this advice

How to Make Twitter Less Like Listening to One Side of a Phone Call for Your Followers - oh yes, there's a 'how to' for just about everything!

Photo credit: Foxypar4 on Flickr

Interesting online marketing articles I've been reading lately

Just a few of the many interesting and useful articles that have caught my eye recently.

The ever-readable Seth Godin on the damage done by misleading headlines or subject lines "Is it better to get a click and then annoy someone, or better to only reach the people who care?"

Getting people's attention on the social web - where do you start? In this video interview Scott Rosenberg argues that the way to be heard when everyone's talking is to listen... 

How do you write effectively for the web? Not a new post, but still useful. A massive number of online writing resources gathered in one place.

Jason Falls argues that there are four styles of marketing on Twitter - I love this piece and I'm sure I'll be talking about it in a blog post soon.

Coca-Cola recently released a new social media policy, and Andy Sernovitz is impressed ... (includes a video of Coke's Andy Brown talking about it.)