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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Social Media Comments
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Hmm, interesting. How wld u handle it? RT @TDefren: Tweeting Under False Circumstances: A Social Media Ethical Dilemma. [link to post] -
RT @MJGagnon: RT @TDefren: Tweeting Under False Circumstances: A Social Media Ethical Dilemma. [link to post] -
Smart & straightforward RT @TDefren: Tweeting Under False Circumstances: A Social Media Ethical Dilemma. [link to post] via @rnadworny -
RT @Aerocles: RT @DiaDalsky: Currently reading RT @TDefren: Tweeting Under False Circumstances: SM Ethical Dilemma [link to post] #in -
Tweeting Under False Circumstances: Social Media Ethical Dilemmas – [link to post] (via @mjgagnon) -
RT @TDefren: Tweeting Under False Circumstances: A Social Media Ethical Dilemma. [link to post] (Very helpful insight, Todd.) -
RT @Aerocles @DiaDalsky @TDefren: Tweeting Under False Circumstances: A #SM Ethical Dilemma [link to post] #in -
Blog post of the day: Ethical dilemma, tweeting under false pretenses (PR Squared) [link to post] -
RT @ mikeberrytweets RT @tdefren Tweeting Under False Circumstances: Social Media Ethical Dilemmas [link to post] -
RT @tdefren Tweeting Under False Circumstances: SM Ethical Dilemmas [link to post] – can’t wait for the rest of the series!
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Interesting conundrum. Guest-blogging is a fairly common practice, so I suppose it’s only natural that guest-tweeting might happen from time to time. However, it seems like the retweet or hashtag functions would be effective ways to handle this: just RT content from the “guest tweeter” or RT relevant hashtags. Or, if you want constant coverage, use a collective/company Twitter account, rather than your individual one. I guess I don’t have a big problem with what happened, but it does feel slightly unsavory.
I like the approach very much. It respects the principles of full disclosure and met a client/audience need. Without disclosure, it’s a major problem. But this example is, rather, a nice case study. Well done.
Interesting post and something I believe we will see more and more of in the not so far future. As others have noted, I believe the way you handled the situation was “the right way” (assuming there is a right/wrong way) however I see the potential for the waters to get muddy fast. You stated you could see the request came from a “good place” and while I agree, I don’t believe the exec had ill intentions; however, where is that line drawn? I think one of the bigger issues you stated is the inability to say “no” in the service industry, especially in today’s economy. Firms are desperately trying to hold on to the clients they have while hungry to attract more. I don’t believe there are any hard and fast rules and inquiries should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis but are we opening ourselves up for trouble down the road by suggesting we will evaluate such requests at all? I have more questions than answers but thank you for the post as it is a dilemma and something I, as well as the industry at large, should continue to consider/discuss.
This is certainly one of those issues that falls into the ‘grey area’ where, rather than right or wrong, the answer will come down to different peoples’ perspectives.
Should you have been troubled? I’m not sure. You were certainly right to insist on disclosure. Then again, I wonder why you didn’t go with something more explicit. To me, “extended team” could mean people within the organization but outside the immediate department.
I’ve found myself asking the following question when it comes to disclosure: “Why would we avoid identifying exactly who is posting?” Was it because you felt the tweets would be less effective if people knew they were coming from an agency? When I’ve asked myself that question in the past, it often came back to that fear of being less effective as an “agency guy.” If that were the only reason, I found myself compelled to disclose more fully.
For example, it would have been just as easy to have the disclaimer read “During the show some of my tweeting will be supplemented by our agency colleagues including Todd (^t), Greg (^g) and Fred (^f)” or something similar.
Like I said, it’s a bit of a grey area but that’s my two cents.
Hi Todd,
I think your approach reflects the real world application of social media tools: they move too quickly for most people with other responsibilities. Many people probably don’t realize that a lot of what they hear right from executives’ mouths wasn’t necessarily written by that executive (let alone what they type). Imagine a CEO saying at the beginning of a speech to some Chamber of Commerce that his communications firm drafted the words he was about to speak – and proceeded to reminded the audience of this fact at 15 minute intervals!
I think SHIFT’s approach was not only ethical but an excellent example upon which new social media standards can be further developed.
Cheers,
Jeff
I think this was exactly the right solution. I was really worried where you were going until you proposed the solution to your client. Kudos to your client for accepting and understanding. Transparency and honesty are non-negotiable.
This series is an automotic retweet for me. Thanks for sharing and looking forward to the next “dilemma”.
Like others I agree with the approach you took, disclosing the tweeting and labeling the tweets. Louise makes a good point about tweeting for a company or brand, vs. an exec with a following but it’s still a smart idea to identify the tweeter or tweeters.
Rich’s point about “putting words in his mouth” is spot on. If you’re already consulting on PR and marketing, you probably have a good idea of the client’s voice. You had direction from the client as to the nature of the tweeting: show coverage to keep engaging, while the exec focuses on the job at hand (which I’m all in favor of) and the client trusts you to do represent him appropriately.
Disclosure, early and often is key; if someone didn’t like that the exec had someone else “doing the typing” they can always unfollow. FWIW.
Todd- very good explanation of what could be a misleading situation.
My feeling is that it is okay to use distribution mechanisms like twitter, Facebook or even e-mail as long as the content is drafted by the original, intended source.
As marketing and PR companies go, in many cases they are distributing content for corporations or on behalf of executives. We can pretty much rest assured that a CEO at any Fortune 100 corporation is not answering every e-mail personally. Write a letter to the White House, and there is a 1% chance that Pres. Obama will answer himself. Is this misleading? I don’t think so. Again, as long as the content is drafted by the original source, it really doesn’t matter who clicks around the screen in order to distribute it.
But, you bring up a very good point in that we should all be aware of how to handle up-and-coming social media distribution mechanisms.
I agree with the tactic of alerting followers to check a certain hashtag a la “I will be out of pocket during the remainder of the conference, and will only be tweeting sporadically” kind of like an out of office voicemail or email response.
I don’t understand why this executive felt the need for his followers to get a completely uninterrupted stream of tweets. I think THAT need hits at what’s not genuine. The essence of twitter is that it’s human interaction between real human beings. I think reasonable people would understand that he might be inaccessible for a few days and would be more than willing to follow a hashtag instead of phantom tweets from a PR team.
That is how I would have counseled the executive. I would have had him write that message on his blog
[Sorry, I'll be running around for the next few days at xyz conference that you know all about so I won't be tweeting like my usual self. Feel free to follow the conference goings-on at #xyz, a hashtag manned by my PR team. I'll check in from the ground to let you know how things are going when I can!]
A personal, human message probably would have fostered a more genuine relationship with his followers, who would have understood his dilemma and been eager to actually hear from him when he did tweet, however sporadic, just to see how things were going.
Looking forward to the rest of the series!
@amandamogul
I think it’s fine you tweet on behalf of him. Just change his Twitter background for the conference, with the names of the PR team, and add their initials [jc] after each tweet.
The followers should appreciate the transparency.
Cheers,
@johncarson