Twitter

Monday, February 22, 2010

Personal vs. logo Twitter accounts: Must they be mutually exclusive?

A debate several years ago, during blogging’s heyday, centered on the wisdom of introducing “character blogs.” These aren’t fake blogs. They’re very transparent in their use of a fictional character as the blogger. Some experts defended the practice while others insisted that it could never be a good idea. I fell somewhere in the middle, advising against them in nearly all instances but acknowledging there might be a time when they could work.

An example would be Dwight Schrute’s blog. Schrute is the character played by Rainn Wilson on “The Office” (a show I don’t watch, by the way). Posts are written in character. None of the readers of the blog actually believe a ficitious character is actually writing it. (At least, that’s my fervent hope.)

The argument against the character blog is simple: Wouldn’t it be better if Rainn Wilson blogged?

The fact is, he does. He has Posterous blog and a Twitter account (with nearly 2 million followers). If it’s authenticity, you’re after, Wilson makes plenty of it available.

Why do these concepts need to be mutually exclusive? People don’t read Schrute’s blog (originally penned by Wilson himself but now in the hands of ghost writers) to interact with the actor. They seek a means of staying connected with a favorite TV show in between episodes. And it works.

I have frequently noted that I’d become a loyal reader of any blog under Eric Cartman’s by-line. I got the same argument in response: Wouldn’t it be better if “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone blogged? It would be good, yes, and I’d probably read it. But I’d still expect to laugh my ass off reading a Cartman blog.

The debate seems to have shifted from blogs to Twitter. A number of experts dismiss what they call “logo accounts,” tweets sent under the brand name and not associated with a specific individual. Twitter, they argue, is best when it’s personal.

My answer shouldn’t surprise you: It depends.

The vast majority of the Twitter accounts I follow are individuals because, it’s true, I’d rather hear from people than brands. But I do follow a handful of logo accounts. With those accounts, I honestly don’t give a damn who’s writing it. My motivation for following in the first place was the timely receipt of information.

CNN is one example. I follow the account because I want to get headlines fast. I’m a news junkie, always have been, and getting a tweet that notifies me of the latest events satisfies my craving. I have no interest in what reporter wrote the story or what he thinks of it. I want the 140-character news hook.

Nearly 1 million people are happy to get the tweets from CNN without that personal touch.

The Dell Outlet is another example, with nearly 1.6 million followers who want only the latest deal they can get. There is a name attached to the account—@StephanieAtDell can be reached with questions or problems. But the account itself serves just one purpose: notification of special offers on “refurbished, scratch-and-dent and previously ordered new Dell product.” Would it be a better account if it were named @StephanieDellOutlet?

I don’t think so. First, who cares? The personality just isn’t an issue if my goal is simple notification. Second, what happens when Stephanie leaves? Yes, I know the account can be renamed while maintaining its followers, but some degree of confusion would surely follow.

At Intel, two employees are identified in the profile as the handlers of the account. If those responsibilities change, the account stays the same while the profile gets updated. Why not just give each Intel tweeter their own account? In fact, several Intel employees do tweet. In fact, both of the employees currently listed on the @Intel account are identified by their Twitter handles, and the company actively encourages employees to connect with each other via their Twitter accounts. But @Intel is the official, authoritative account that serves as the corporation’s statement of record. That’s an important distinction.

And there’s no reason—none at all—that Intel can’t benefit from adopting both approaches.

When discussing Dell, the example of the dozens of employees with NameAtDell accounts is usually presented. I agree that there is huge opportunity in having real people like my friends Lionel Menchaca (@LionelAtDell) and Richard Binhammer (@RichardAtDell) building relationships and personifying the Dell brand.

But there’s no denying the power of 1.6 million people anxiously awaiting the next notice of a special deal compared to the fewer than 2,000 to 10,000 people following the average Dell employee.

One of Twitter’s strengths is its flexibility. It can be used for just about anything you can dream up for it. In mosti instances, I agree that the authentic human touch is important. But to suggest that it’s a requirement, that every branded logo account would be better if it contained a real person’s name and avatar, is a mistake. It locks organizations into an approach that may honestly not be the best way to achieve their particular goal.

And what about all the people following brand accounts? Are we to assume they just don’t get it? That every time someone reads a tweet form @Starbucks they’re thinking, “This would lock me into the brand more if I could see the face and read the name of the person behind it?” Somehow I doubt it.

Besides, a logo account is often the means by which companies take their first tentative steps into Twitter. Nervous, they set up an account to which a number of authorized employees can post. When the sky doesn’t fall on them, they screw up their courage and let a few employees open personal/business accounts.

So don’t be too fast to dismiss logo accounts on Twitter. If they serve the purpose for which they were created, there’s no reason to fall victim to the punditry that suggests they’re some kind of misguided, clueless mistake.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Are budget cuts to blame for Vancouver Sun’s (inaccurate) report of Gordon Lightfoot’s death?

UPDATE: It turns out that the original prank wasn’t a tweet, but rather a phone call to a friend of the singer, who believed the report and passed it along. But Twitter got the blame anyway. GigaOm’s Matthew Ingram posted a detailed account today.

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When tweets began flooding Twitter with reports that Michael Jackson had died, I resisted what I’ll admit was a very strong temptation to retweet the news. It was only when TMZ published confirmation that I felt comfortable broadcasting the sad news to my own followers.

I know TMZ may not be The New York Times, but it’s run by Harvey Levin, an attorney and former legal correspondent for the news operation at KNBC, the NBC affiliate in Los Angeles. TMZ may be filled with sleaze, but it doesn’t report unconfirmed stories as fact.

Mainstream media confirmation tends to be my benchmark. Far too many death rumors have circulated on Twitter (Jeff Goldblum, for instance, and Johnny Depp), only to be revealed as hoaxes that well-meaning people were all too ready to amplify through the retweeting process.

Professional journalists, on the other hand, verify information—usually from multiple authoritative sources—before publishing it.

After today, however, I’m rethinking my policy. Not that I’ll retweet reports of celebrity deaths the instant I receive one. No, I’m rethinking my reliance on traditional mainstream media for validation of the report’s accuracy.

As I watch Tweetdeck update, I see Twitter teeming with reports that iconic Canadian folk singer Gordon Lightfoot is not dead. There’s radio audio available of the singer himself confirming his continued presence among the living, along with stories in publications like The Globe and Mail noting that earlier reports of Lightfoot’s death was a hoax.

I did retweet the first message I saw, which came from a trusted friend. I retweeted it because of my friend’s source. It wasn’t Twitter. It was The Vancouver Sun, where the story appeared along with a Canwest News Service copyright notice. The story has since been removed.

It’s too easy to accuse the Sun of rushing the story in order to get a scoop. I suspect budget cuts have more to do with it. As newspaper budgets decline, fact checkers are among the first to be let go. Reporters are being laid off, too, creating a burden on the staff that remains, especially given the demand they already faced to produce more copy to accommodate the online world. Some reporters are expected to crank out three or four articles a day.

Or it could be that most of the Sun’s reporters are too busy covering the Olympics to verify information like this, which Lightfoot’s manager says began with a tweet originating in Ottawa.

The Sun isn’t the only media outlet to repeat the story. Evidently (according to Lightfoot himself in the audio interview referenced above), he was getting calls from people who heard it on the radio. (The radio stations were citing reports from “out west,” which may well have been the Sun.)

Comments left to the Sun’s report before it was taken down were savage. Here’s a sampling:

Gordon now task of phoning his family members to tell them he is not dead before they read a garbage story like this. Gord heard he was dead driving in his car.

Canwest is probably sending Kevin Newman over there to whack Gordon right now, to maintain the journalistic integrity of the story.

Unbelievable! If I did my job as poorly, I’d have been fired long ago.

Nice to know you guys are such a reliable source. Someone needs their arse kicked over there and then send an apology or at least flowers of condolences to Mr. Lightfoot.

There is one silver lining to the story: Lightfoot’s music is suddenly in rotation; he’s getting more airplay, he says, than he has in years.

But that’s little comfort to me. If I can’t trust the mainstream media to get this stuff right—and the wrong information is originating in The Crowd—who can I trust?

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

WOMMA to issue guide to social media marketing disclosure

UPDATE: WOMMA has issued its press release on its new guidelines for social media disclosure.

The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) is set to issue a guide to disclosure in social media marketing sometime tomorrow, February 17. The guide was prompted by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s new guidelines for disclosure of relationships between companies and people discussing them and their products or services in social media venues.

The document is designed to enhance rather than replace the rules that may already exist in your organization. And it’s WOMMA’s intention to continually update the guide given the ongoing evolution of social media.

The guide covers the most commonly used social media channels, including blogs, Twitter and other microblogging tools, social network status updates, video and photo sharing sites and podcasts.

The microblogging hashtag recommendations could be problematic, given the number of similar proposals that have been introduced over the last year or so. (Here’s one proposal; here’s another, and another.) But if all WOMMA members adopt the tags the guide recommends, we may see some consistency emerge around how disclosure is handled on Twitter. The three tags listed in the guide include…

• #spon—Sponsored
• #paid—Paid
• #samp—Sample

WOMMA advises using the same tags on status updates through social networks should there be a character limit in the status update function.

The best advice in the guide—which applies to all of the channels covered—is to provide a link to a complete disclosure and relationships statement, although recommended language for such a statement isn’t included.

The document does recommend language for disclosure that is

clear and prominent. Language should be easily understood and unambiguous. Placement of the disclosure must be easily viewed and not hidden deep in the text or deep on the page. All disclosures should appear in a reasonable font size and color that is both reasable and noticeable to consumers.

For example, for personal and editorial blogs, WOMMA recommends disclosure like…

• I received ___ (product or sample) ___ from ___ (company name), or
• (Company name) ___ sent me ___ (product or sample) ___

WOMMA went through a deliberate process to develop the guide, including creating a blog, Living Ethics, that served as a forum for comments and questions.

I’ll update this post tomorrow when a link becomes available to the official WOMMA guide.

Oh, and by way of disclosure, I was offered a sneak peek at the guide by WOMMA and was not put under an embargo until tomorrow’s announcement.

Monday, February 08, 2010

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #524: February 8, 2010

Content summary: MediaFunnel FIR interview is up; Help A PR Pro Out; Michael Netzley reports from Singapore; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; News That Fits: what Vodafone did when an employee tweeted obscenely, wide and mostly negative reaction to Forrester Research plans to stop analysts from blogging personally; listener comments discussion and FIR Friendfeed Room round-up; news about Thursday’s show; music from Antiqcool; and more.

Get FIR:

• Download the MP3 file (26.2Mb, 65:26)
• Subscribe to the RSS feed
• Get the show at iTunes

Messages from our sponsors: FIR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years, www.ragan.com; Save time with the CustomScoop online clipping service: sign up for your free two-week trial, at www.customscoop.com/fir.

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, for February 8, 2010: A 65-minute podcast recorded live from Wokingham, Berkshire, England, and Concord, California, USA.

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show are posted to the FIR Show Links pages at The New PR Wiki. You can contribute - see the show notes home page for info.

• FIR #524 show notes at The New PR Wiki

Share your comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for future shows, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 8133 9844 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR, or at Jaiku: fir.jaiku.com. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

Join the FIR Discussion Forum and extend your conversations with the FIR community. You can also join the FIR Facebook Community and become an FIR friend.

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So, until Thursday February 11…

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

I surrender. @shelholtz is my new Twitter handle

I give up. I can’t take it any more.

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I’ve thrown in the towel and renamed my Twitter account from @shel to @shelholtz.

If you think this is because of the number of people who have been tweeting to me when they meant to tweet to Shel Israel, that’s not it. I’ve met some great people while directing them to Shel’s account, and I’m happy for any excuse to touch base with my namesake.

No, this was another problem, one I just couldn’t tolerate any longer. Here’s what was happening:

Somebody would tweet something like this:

Note that the first four letter of @Shelton_Scott begin with “shel.”

Now, somebody copies that message, adds some commentary, and tweets it without checking the character count. It comes out like this:

Which means all these messages come to me even though they have nothing to do with me. And they drive me nuts trying to figure out why the hell I’m getting them until I see the ellipses. To make matters worse, 90% of these messages are in Tagalog.

It happens 15, 20 times a day.

So I finally decided, the hell with it. I’ll sacrifice the five extra characters in order to get messages that are meant only for me.

I still have the @shel account and will be watching it for a while to make sure everyone knows where I am now.

(Note: A tremendous shout-out to Laura Fitton—@pistachio—for helping me figure out how to make the change considering I already owned both these accounts; all the instructions I found called for creating a new account.)

Friday, November 20, 2009

BCS launches an ill-advised Twitter account

An employee for one of my clients tweeted me yesterday, pointing me to “what happens when you jump into social media unprepared.” He was talking about the launch of a new Twitter account by BCS—the Bowl Championship Series—the much-maligned system that substitutes for a playoff system for college football teams.

The account, @InsideTheBCS, launched on Thursday and has, since then, accumulated nearly 700 followers. There’s no hint about who might be posting the tweets, although one blog suggests the BCS may have farmed the task out to PR agency HDMK, since the first two people to follow the newly-minted account were HDMK staffers, neither of whom returned calls.

One tweet seems to be signed by Bill Hancock, the new BCS executive director.

Regardless of who’s behind the account, it has been savaged in a number of quarters since it first appeared. A Twitter search I conducted moments ago produced several pages of messages, even though @InsideTheBCS itself has tweeted only 30 times as of this writing.

To the credit of whoever’s writing the tweets, several are responses to what others have said, and some are responses to critical comments. But with hundreds of comments swirling around Twitter, it’s evident that @InsideTheBCS is picking and choosing which comments warrant response. There seems to be no rhyme or reason behind these choices.

The core problem, though, is that nobody seems to have considered the inevitability of BCS haters piling on the account the instant it went public. (Disclosure: I’m no fan myself.) Outside of the NCAA, there is broad consensus that a real playoff system is needed to more fairly determine a national champion. It’s not just the fans who believe that, but also many college football coaches.

So it comes as no surprise to see a surge of criticism aimed at @InsideTheBCS for its insistence on the complex mathematical computations that it uses to determine who will play whom in the post-season. In fact, one tweet from @InsideTheBCS quoted Florida coach Urban Meyer claiming the BCS “has been great for college football. It’s not perfect, but it has been great for college football.” This led to another tweet pointing out that Meyer told the New York Times, “The system is a failure. You’ve got to blow it up and start over” and another that completed the quote cited by @InsideTheBCS: “Followed by laughing and: ‘Now I need to go prep for Fla International!’”

A third tweet suggested that Meyer’s praise was based on his even deeper disdain for the system that preceded the BCS “that screwed out even more teams because of traditional games.”

Much of the piling on has been led by Yahoo sportswriter Dan Wetzel, who has been tweeting quotes from prominent NCAA coaches expressing their disdain for the BCS and otherwise leading the attack with tweets like this one: “It’s a good thing the BCS hired an executive director to ‘educate the fans.’ This Twitter feed is genius.”

@InsideTheBCS has responded defensively to a few tweets calling for a playoff series, and has otherwise posted tweets trying to convince everone the system works.

But it’s not convincing anybody.

While the BCS may have been unprepared for the volume of vitriol the Twitter feed has produced, it hasn’t surprised anyone else. At one blog by a fan of a college team, a post introducing @InsideTheBCS reads, “Oh no they didn’t!! They can’t be serious. People are going to unload on these guys!! This will be pure comedy…” And a comment left to that post responds, “Read their posts. Total propoganda. Let’em rip!”

The BCS had two choices: Forego a Twitter account of be prepared to truly engage college football fans in a real discussion about the system. The approach the BCS has taken, however, only opens the organization up to even greater ridicule and fans the flames of discontent.

Of course, I’m willing to give the BCS time to figure out its mistake and make a mid-course correction to its approach to Twitter. So far, however, so bad.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

“Tips” appear in Twitter DMs; could be a sign of very bad things to come

In the process of finalizing the milestone 500th episode of “For Immediate Release” this morning, I sent a Twitter direct message to our regular Thursday correspondent, Dan York, asking when I could expect his report. Here’s the answer I got from Dan:

Curious about why I’d want to favorite a DM, I replied to Dan about what he had in mind. His answer: “Where can you favorite a DM? I don’t see the option either in the Twitter web interface or in Tweetdeck.” When I let him know that the tip had appeared in his DM to me, he replied, “Wow…wacky…I have know idea how or *why* you would favorite a DM.” In other words, the tip hadn’t come from Dan. Somewhere, somebody inserted it.

I did a bit of investigating and found that CC Chapman is also curious about these mysterious tips:

I don’t know that I’d call it spam, exactly, since there’s no link and it’s not promoting anything. But it certainly creates confusion by leading you to think that the tip was written by the person sending you the message. You also have to wonder whether whoever is creating these tips can start using them for more spam-like purposes.

Whoever’s doing this needs to stop. Adding text to somebody else’s private message is a very, very bad idea.