I'm a little flummoxed at the moment with Typepad. It's not cooperating in making visible a fairly comprehensive comment from Jeff Hurt (blogger for the Midcourse Corrections blog) in response to my post yesterday.
If you recall, the gist is: though I currently tweet under a personal Twitter account as @melaclaro , I've also been ushering my local ASTD chapter (Orange County) into the online social sphere. As part of that effort I've helped my local chapter start tweeting a few months ago as @astdOC.
But here's the thing: I've since invited two other tweeps from our chapter's board to tweet with me under @astdOC. Nothing sinister. We're in lockstep with the messages tweeted, have always intended to do so honestly and transparently, but were simply hopeful about any synergies we might have afforded each other.
The question is, how does that square with the 'sphere?
As it turns out, we've been a little too transparent, perhaps.
Humans and faces in organizational Twitter profiles.
In yesterday's post, I solicited feedback about crowd wisdom on best practices in allowing multiple tweeps tweeting under one twitter organization. Jeff took time to post a well-documented rationale for listing the (human) personalities behind the veil of an organizational Twitter account. Alas, he had to resort to emailing it to me because Typepad just wasn't havin' it for some reason. (We suspect the length of the comment caused my blog theme to burp.)
Anyway, I'm glad he thought to email it to me. Because, while Typepad-support works to resolve my trouble ticket, I can at least give respect to Jeff's comments by sharing it with you below. Please also see my response after the end quote.
Comments about multiple tweeps under one account.
----- Posted, in its entirety, on behalf of Jeff Hurt -----
Thanks Mel and since I stirred this pot, here are my thoughts.
This weekend, I was at a conference speaking on social media to association chapters. Ironically, we were discussing this very issue, as I was tweeting @ASTDOC. It was very frustrating because I did not know who I was talking with. It felt impersonal and as if it was one of those infamous computer robotic voice mail systems was trying to converse with me.
I wrote a draft to post but it was too long so I tried to edit it for quick reading. It’s still too long IMO, and yes, this is the shorter version. So here are eight reasons or examples of why not to tweet as an organization but rather as people from the organization.
1) I would suggest that the most important issues are, as you discussed, authenticity, honesty, openness and transparency. If an organization has multiple people tweet from one account, how do the readers know who is tweeting? (Not all readers are members and “in the know” of your policy that several people are tweeting, so by its very nature, you are not authentic, upfront or truthful. You are misleading the reader.) Organizations list phone numbers and emails of it leaders, why not do the same thing with Twitter accounts?
2) A company or organization is a thing, not a person, so it cannot have a conversation. Are readers/members supposed to communicate with the organization/brand, which in itself is awkward? The people behind the brand, the logo or the curtain actually have the conversations with others. Even in the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy & her friends wanted to know who was behind the curtain. So do Twitter readers. (Would that be Tweaders? Twitter Readers.)
3) Author Rohit Bhargava of “Personality Not Included” addresses this very issue and discusses why an organization needs to have a face, to have people behind the logo and that the organization needs human stories for people to connect to. His home page says, “Don’t be a faceless organization.” He states that being faceless used to prove credibility but now shows that the organization is not to be trusted. http://www.personalitynotincluded.com/mediakit/60words/
4) ASAE (American Society of Association Executives) had to address a similar issue this past January and bloggers and Tweeps said they were being secretive and trying to hide something. ASAE had multiple people tweeting from one conference account and attendees (virtual and those present) started asking questions of the tweeter. They even asked, “Who is behind these tweets?” No one responded or identified him or herself. A host of bloggers called ASAE dishonest and not to be trusted for their position on this issue and ASAE is still taking hits for this issue today. Some members said it showed ASAE’s corporate culture. (ASAE changed their position by the way.) You can read the rest of the story here with some links to other bloggers: http://snapblogger.wordpress.com/2009/01/29/why-all-the-secrecy-a-story-of-attempted-brand-jacking/
5) Association and generation blogger Jamie Notter “outed” ASAE for not being open because they had several nameless people tweeting from one account: http://www.getmejamienotter.com/getmejamienotter/2009/01/learning-at-technology-conference.html
6) Amber MacArthur, @ambermac, new media journalist, web strategist and social media specialist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber_MacArthur), presented a social media keynote this weekend and recommended that people put humanness to their organizations and social media accounts. She said it was best practice and a recommendation she made to all companies and organizations that a person be identified with each organization Twitter account.
7) I think this is similar to Guy Kawasaki’s twitter ghostwriters and the public outcry against it. The public wanted to know who was sending his tweets. http://davefleet.com/2009/03/guy-kawasaki-discloses-ghost-writers-defuses-issue/ Guy took some hits for having three additional people tweet from his account. He now identifies each author with abbreviations.
8) Last, and probably most controversial and may offend some, I submit to you that some readers of faceless organization tweets will perceive that organization has a culture of old school, top-down bureaucratic control style of management, one that does not embrace diversity of opinion, empowerment, or allow people to speak on its behalf. Faceless tweets send a message that the organization does not trust people to speak properly on its behalf and that the tweeters must get permission or approval to tweet because they could say the wrong thing. Who wants to serve with an organization like that? I seriously doubt that ASTDOC has that type of personality yet it is going to be perceived that way by some. I also think that an organization with a working board will have a personality that changes from year to year depending upon who is leading them at that time.
I, like you Mel, am a nonprofit board member, volunteer and advocate of many local, state and national organizations. I am also an employee of a nonprofit association. I have several accounts, from my work to my volunteer efforts to my board roles to my personal account. I completely understand wanting to have one voice and present a united front as an organization. On the other hand, perception is reality, with readers. Just like this weekend, I had no idea who I was tweeting with from ASTDOC and it was very frustrating. It felt like I was having a conversation with a non-entity, especially since that person never identified who he or she was. From my perspective, the ASTDOC account was a puppet being controlled by a group of people. I wanted to pull back the curtain and have a real conversation, just like Dorothy. I also wanted to say, “Will, the real ASTDOC person, please stand up?”
PS If you are going to have several people post tweets from this account, you could easily fix this issue by putting their names in the profile and abbreviations in the tweets. That way readers could identify who was tweeting.
----- End Quote -----
Changes for @astdOC
Again, I really do appreciate the feedback. And, though I disagree with one point (#2 where it's suggested that an organization "cannot have a conversation") the rest, I think is fair, and is exactly the feedback I was looking for. (What do you think? Should we explore #2 together in a future post?)
The end result...a change we made this evening to @astdOC's Twitter profile. I really like -- and agree -- with Jeff's end-point that it would help people, with whom we connect, to know who it is behind the veil, so to speak.
I love it. After all, that's the point, isn't it? To put a face to ASTD-OC and let people experience our chapter's organizational character, values and culture.
Hopefully, with this change, one of those organizational character-things you experience immediately about our local ASTD-OC chapter is that, we treasure constructive feedback and are willing to change.
Check out the new @astdOC background and bio. Over the next few days, we'll make some changes, too, in the format we use while posting our tweets. (To reveal the person behind it.)
I trust you'll let me (us) know if we're on the right track here, organizationally.
And, if you have any additional suggestions or best practices, I'd love to hear about them in the comments below. (Uh, I'm figuring Typepad has fixed the comment-posting issue thingy by now.)
