Tweeting Under False Circumstances: Social Media Ethical Dilemmas
I am going to start off with a bang, in this 1st of 7 planned posts about Real-World Ethical Dilemmas in Social Media.
What would you do if a client contact — who had a pretty solid Twitter following — asked you to tweet from his account, as if you were him?
Crazy? Wrong? Unethical? Let’s discuss.
The client contact is well-known in his field. He enjoys a loyal following of industry peers on Twitter. He posts regularly, sometimes several times a day. He “gets” Twitter; he finds value in the dialogue and his followers appreciate that a well-placed exec from a Big Company is engaged with them online.
Now, a big industry tradeshow is coming up. He’ll be very active there, as a speaker and organizer.
The executive wants his tweetstream to reflect his activity at the show, and to highlight other happenings at the conference, as well. He’s very concerned that he won’t be able to support this many to-do’s.
We work closely with this executive and he has come to trust us implicitly… which leads to the ethical challenge. I’ll paraphrase the request as it came from him:
“I want SHIFT to ‘take over’ my Twitter account, and tweet as me, during the course of the show. I’ll also tweet, but very sporadically and with far less ability to interact and respond to my followers. I don’t want to let them down, and I trust you guys to act in my stead. I know you won’t answer questions that you don’t know how to answer, and I trust that you won’t embarass me or misrepresent the company … Be ‘me’ online, so I can make a full commitment to my engagement on the show floor.”
You can see how this request comes from a “good place.” This executive’s commitment to online engagement is so fierce, he doesn’t want to abandon it even for an important event. He knows his followers would understand his absences, but he thinks there is going to be real value in tracking what’s happening at the conference, and in responding to folks online throughout.
While it’s true he is asking us to misrepresent ourselves, he feels that it would still be authentic because of his trust in us.
How do you respond to that? Do you just say no?
Well, there’s no such thing as “no,” when you work in a Service industry (thus this series of posts!) … So we suggested a compromise …
Yes, we would tweet from his account, but with the following conditions:
—-Prior to the event, he must tweet, “During the show some of my tweeting will be supplemented by our extended team.” We felt that the term “extended team” was appropriate, suggesting that that term covered both internal and 3rd party colleagues.
—-A reminder to that effect would go out, regularly, throughout the conference, i.e., every 10th tweet would remind followers that someone besides the executive might be “at the controls” of his Twitter account.
—-When character spaces permitted, we’d add a #team hashtag to denote that the tweet was not published by the exec — but honestly, this attribution fell away more often than not; we largely relied on the “every 10th tweet” approach to cover our ethical backsides.
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 tweetstream became a mix of on-the-floor reporting by the exec, supplemented by dispatches from a 3rd party response team in Marketing.
Still, no doubt there were folks who only checked-in on the executive’s tweets intermittently. To them, our team members were ostensibly tweeting under false pretenses; they were unwittingly “duped” by our approach.
I’m not troubled by that, as the tweets authored by SHIFTers were always innocuous and helpful. But … should I be troubled?
How would you have handled such a request?
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RT @TDefren: Tweeting Under False Circumstances: A Social Media Ethical Dilemma. [link to post] -
Interesting case, what would you do? RT @TDefren: Tweeting Under False Circumstances [link to post] -
Interesting. RT @TDefren: Tweeting Under False Circumstances: A Social Media Ethical Dilemma. [link to post] (via @skydiver) -
RT @skydiver: Excellent. RT @TDefren: Tweeting Under False Circumstances: A Social Media Ethical Dilemma. [link to post] -
Interesting ethical dilema by PRSqaured – how would u handle this client? [link to post] (I suggest using hashtags and more people) -
Agreed. RT @skydiver: Excellent. RT @TDefren: Tweeting Under False Circumstances: A Social Media Ethical Dilemma. [link to post] -
Excellent. RT @TDefren: Tweeting Under False Circumstances: A Social Media Ethical Dilemma. [link to post] (via @skydiver) -
Perfect handling of ethical social media dilema (tweeting for a client?) [link to post] via @TDefren -
RT @gingerw: RT @skydiver: Excellent. RT @TDefren: Tweeting Under False Circumstances: A Social Media Ethical Dilemma. [link to post] -
100% agree rt @TDefren: Tweeting Under False Circumstances: A Social Media Ethical Dilemma. [link to post]
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I think the way you handled it was spot on, Todd. Another great example of this is the Ontario Ombudsman (@Ont_Ombudsman). When the account was first launched it was managed by the communications staff – a fact they repeated regularly so people knew. Once a week or so, the Ombudsman himself would take the keyboard and answer questions directly. Each time the hand off occurred, it was well broadcast.
Eventually the Ombudsman grew to love Twitter and took control of the account himself, using it for work AND personal tweets. The only time he’s not tweeting is when he’s doing a press conference or at a conference – and he always indicates when he’s handing it over to the comms team.
I think people just want authenticity. If that means handing the keyboard to someone else for an afternoon, that’s not a big deal, so long as it’s well publicized. It’s all part of being human.
I think that’s the right approach.
Our company’s webcare team in the Netherlands (http://twitter.com/INGnl_webcare) uses a single account, but they want it still to be personal, and for the tweeters to be accountable. They’ve developed a convention of using “^” to indicate who the tweet is from and you’ll see ^Hakim or ^Erik at the end of tweets.
I think as long as there is reasonable clarity about who is tweeting, either as a team account, or as a support team for one person, it’s OK.
The murky water is when the account looks like one thing, a personal tweeter, and is in fact another.
Todd,
It sounds like you handled this elegantly and ethically as always.
You probably help write press releases for people like this, with his quotes in it. Not exactly the same, but close.
You could make ads for him with “real people” but who aren’t really his customers.
Yup, this sounds like rationalizing. The big question is: Did SHIFT Tweet something that the client never would have said? Did you literally put words in his mouth that were out of character, both substantively and stylistically? If the answer to these is yes, then you may have crossed the line.
If it’s no, then it seems you did what you could to let people know that someone else was doing the typing.
Exhale.
My first reaction was that your client does not get Twitter or social media. There’s a layer of dishonesty on his demand.
Second, I think your approach made sense though I wonder why not use #hashtags for the conference and have your client announce to his/her followers that he/she will have extra ‘feet on the street’ covering all angles of the event? Then your client can tweet whenever possible, the coverage is strong – wouldn’t that make your client look like a hero to the followers?
Best
Pat
P.S. Great start to the series – looking forward to the rest.
Great idea in disclosing who’s behind the tweeting curtain. As a ‘virtual tweeter for a restaurant, I must gently remind them to interact on their own; I tweet clever anecdotes regarding their menu, daily specials, etc. I don’t want to be a robot RTing or responding under a facade. Otherwise their missing the whole point of their Twitter effort: being social.
Todd:
First, let me say thank you for sharing this. Talking about challenges is the best way for all of us to become better professionals.
I think your approach was spot-on. The only other tweak I might consider would be to temporarily change the Twitter bio to reflect that the extended marketing team would be tweeting during the conference. If 1 or 2 “Shifters” are the primary helpers, you could also mention their usernames in the bio. Then, just switch the bio back after the conference.
Looking forward to the next entry in this series…
Personally, I liked the way you handled this situation. People who truly understand how to use Twitter will find a way to make a situation work and the executive you helped is a great example. Even though Twitter is micro-blogging it still takes time and that can sometimes be in very short supply. I applaud the executive and I applaud you for finding an acceptable solution.
Todd, what a great question/topic to discuss. I really like the idea of the client’s tweetstream being supplemented by an “extended team.” This seems like a very reasonable condition to meet the situation. I think this is also in the realm of the disclosure question on if you tweet on behalf of a client (on your own Twitter profile) and whether or not you indicate the relationship. As for being troubled, I think yes, it is wise to be troubled by these types of things in a way that first gives pause before rolling something out with not much forethought. Thanks for sharing.
- @vedo
But what is more interesting to me is that “paid pr practitioners” (as called by some) is softened to “extended team”. We all know what does the first one mean. What about the second?
Todd ~ After I restarted my heart by reciting the PRSA Code of Ethics in Latin, I found myself in total agreement with you. “Open and honest communication” is the key to this conundrum, and you handled the client’s request exactly as I would have done.
I spent nearly an entire class period with my Intro to PR troops at Curry College yesterday discussing just this issue; it took a little role-playing to help them understand, but they got it.
Let’s hope both our clients…and our publics…understand that transparency is crucial in cyber-communications. Thanks for another great thought-provoker!
I’ll agree with the other comments that it was spot on. One case in point here in Columbia, SC is the ladies basketball team for the University of South Carolina. The coach is all over twitter, but obviously can’t tweet during games. With women’s basketball, there’s very little coverage – so she’s in essence given her followers another outlet for game information by giving over to a guest tweeter during games. The play-by-play is cool, the time is well-used, and everyone knows Coach is focused on the team.
Super post. Thank you. I’ve been facing a similar dilemma with “ghost-blogging.” Clients get social media, and yet they don’t always have the time to do it consistently. Your solution is brillant, and will help maintain the built-in credibility of social media.