Social media is supposed to be all about relationships and conversations, right?
Authenticity is highly valued.
However, as more social networks come on the scene, each adds new features, and the number of friends, followers, and connections in each grows, can also become chaotic and overwhelming.
One way to deal with the chaos is to us tools that automate some social media tasks. Another option is to delegate or outsource social media tasks to someone else.
But do these strategies violate the value authenticity?
Today we kick off a series called Authentic or Not? In which we’ll discuss some of the popular social media time-savers. I’m really interested to hear your opinions on these techniques.
1) Ghost Tweeting, Facebooking, & Blogging
Some authors, celebrities, CEOs, and even pastors actually have a publicist or someone within their organization do their tweets or Facebook status updates for them. Some even have ghost writers do their blog posts.
Sometimes it’s because the individual doesn’t understand social media and someone else would do a better job of it. Sometimes the individual understands social media but doesn’t want to put the time and effort into it.
Many people think ghost writing is disingenuous because people assume that when something goes out under a person’s name that it’s really their words.
Social media guru Guy Kawasaki recently made waves when he advocated ghost tweeting, saying:
Why does it matter who is doing the tweeting? Either the content is good or not good. I’d rather follow a smart intern tweeting for a CEO than an dumb CEO tweeting for himself or herself.
People who have ghost writers usually say that they collaborate with the person doing the writing. It’s like the president having speech writers. He gives them general themes, they write the speech, and then he may tweak the final product.
What do you think about ghost tweeting/Facebooking/blogging?
Authentic or not?
15 Comments
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My feeling is that you can have the best of both worlds. Why not use skilled writers who are well versed then have pastors contribute when time allows. Consistent relevant content is key to successful interaction.
Communications would come to a total standstill at our place if we didn’t employ the editorial process (which is what most of this is). We are assuming that all leaders are good communicators–they are not. Skilled ghost writers know their counterparts well enough to be able to communicate the essence of their message in effective words.