TweetGate
Background and premise: Getting more followers is crucial to using Twitter as marketing tool. Furthermore, the key to getting more followers is interesting tweets, and the key to interesting tweets is links to interesting stuff.
I've always used Twitterfeed to automatically tweet anything posted to Truemors because I knew that Annie Colbert was running Truemors after I sold it to NowPublic. She has an uncanny ability to find interesting things so I let the Truemors RSS feed automatically tweet into my stream.
Around the end of 2008 I started getting emails from Gina Ruiz and Bill Meade with links to pages that they thought were tweetworthy. I noticed that I posted every link that they sent me.
So I gave Gina and Bill my password so that they could tweet as me--why have another step in the process?
Then I started getting many tweets asking how I can tweet so much good stuff. Right about then, Paddy Donnelly asked me to do an interview, so I used that opportunity to explain how I tweet:
http://adjix.com/qmx9
Note that the interview appeared on January 18, 2009. Every time I was asked how I tweet so much since then, I provided a link to that interview. I've done this dozens of times. Paddy told me that 8,000 people have read it so far. So much for a coverup.
Fast forward to March.
Annie leaves NowPublic/Truemors, so I hire her to find links for me and tweet them. So now Annie and Gina are doing it all the time. Bill hardly tweets anymore. Then I get this email from Noam Cohen of the NY Times:
_____
Guy -- I write a column for the Times about the Internet, and I am looking into the pressing question, is there ghost-written twittering? I am told you have discussed this important issue publicly? Do you have a moment to discuss the issue?
_____
So I call him up and do the interview. He asks if he can talk to the two people who tweet for me, and being the transparent Guy that I am, I provide contact information for both Gina and Annie. He gets in touch with Annie, and she is included in his NY Times story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/technology/internet/27twitter.html
This is when some people go nuts: "OMG, Guy uses ghostwriters! Forget AIG and Watergate, this is the biggest scandal ever! The NY Times investigated Guy, forced Annie to go on the record, and outed him."
The only question is whether Noam will get a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. Right around the same time, I give a keynote in NY that launched a thousand rips:
My reaction to the twedantic reactions is "Huh?" Then Dave Fleet suggests that Annie and Gina add their initials to their tweets. At first I resist because I didn't want to give anyone the satisfaction of thinking that they "forced me to come clean," but then I thought, "Why not? People will see how great my ghostwriters are. More power to Gina and Annie. Maybe they'll get more work out of this."
And that's the whole story.
So you truly understand how I operate:
- Gina and Annie only tweet links to interesting stuff. They NEVER respond as me.
- I respond to @s and Directs as much as I can. If you do not see at "GR" or "AC" in the tweet, it is me or the Alltop news blog which automatically posts into my stream once every two days or so.
My position was, and remains, that the most important thing is the quality of tweets. I'd rather read the tweets of a web-savvy intern ghostwriting for a big-name CEO than the actual tweets of a a big-name CEO who is clueless.
But imagine the impact of two great ghostwriters AND a figure who is web savvy and who answers all by himself. And when all is said and done, the most reliable indication of quality is retweets:
http://retweetist.com/users
And that's what I care about most. So now you know the whole story, and I'm trying to find out if Ralph Lauren really designed my Polo shirt.
Comments (15)
I also became a loyal fan because you follow everybody, give great advice and DO take time to connect and talk with your followers!
I can attest that we have had several conversations online and through dm's, even when I had very few followers. Not very many people in your position would be so caring!
As Seth recently said "ignore your critics"!
You are doing fantastic things...keep it up! You have a ton of fans for a reason!
if you were out talking about how u dont have anytime because you are tweeting 24/7 maybe it might annoy someone, but im sure there are thousands of agency accounts who are being ghost tweeted.
atleast you are not using automated software, you are giving someone a job to do it!
good work to be that busy!
1. Most big name CEO's are far from clueless when they start sharing "what they are doing" on Twitter. If one is, let him or she be. Most important, let people learn, support them.
1.1 It's not (at) all about what you'd rather read....
2. Social Media is actually about authenticity more than it is about quality.
3. Your Twitter strategy isn't sustainable, at all. You say it's about growth, while the crisis is all about the growth objective failing, big time, period. Success does not equal growth.
3.1 Easy come... Easy Go...
4. Quality, in my world, is indicated by a lot of things, but most certainly not mainly by the number of retweets by social media guru wannabees.
5. How about getting a few children from a poor country to do your ghost-tweets, like mr Ralph Lauren does to make your Polo shirt.
please check:
http://www.howtousetwitterformarketingandpr.com
True value is in the things you cannot copy. You are unique Guy, just like everybody else.
Please be true and share what you're actually doing without thinking of "growth" or more followers... and I think you'd be happier with 50% or even 25% of the followers you have now.
I'm sure a lot of people would love to read about your real adventures as a fellow human and entrepreneur. I would!
However, I was definitely annoyed with your @alltop account (until I blocked it) because it is like intelligent super spam. I think using Twitter search to find topics people are talking about in order to promote your own websites to them crosses a spam vs. opt-in line.
I was following you when I saw the debacle unfold. I watched for myself and I read this post thoroughly. I think that you are being a little too defensive, and spend more time focused on justifying your behavior than anything else. (I also unfollowed you.)
Here's the weird thing about twitter. If I follow GuyKawasaki, it's because I assume that Guy Kawasaki is doing the tweeting. Not his associates. Not some feed. I assume that I can hit the DM button, the Reply button, and engage in conversation with Guy Kawasaki. Not his associates. Not some feed.
I reported to you when someone set up GuyCKawasaki on twitter, using your likeness (a sueable offense), and I was happy to out him as a spammer, because I knew it wasn't you.
But...apparently GuyKawasaki isn't you either. At least, most of the time.
Look, if you post GuyKawasaki as your user name, I expect you to be there. Period. You can include guest posters. A feed. But you need to be there too--AND, you need to be upfront about it. You were not transparent like you claimed. You were called out. You had to explain yourself. That's not being upfront or transparent.
If I followed GuyKawasaki, Inc. on the other hand, I would never expect you to show up and it would be a treat when you did. I would expect the employee tweets and links, because I'd know what I was getting when I signed up to follow you.
It seems you are trying to deflect the issue by distracting us with a justification like whether Ralph Lauren designed your polo shirt--news flash, we all know he probably signed off on the design or license at best. But if he said he did, presented himself as having done so with his own two hands, and then we find out he only slapped his name on it while everyone else did the work, then he would be called on the carpet too.
twitter wasn't designed for business growth. As with everything, business--including me--will find a way to use it to their advantage, and there is nothing wrong with that. But it's the same as finding out the CEO doesn't write the blog, even when he says he does. It's finding out the assistant wrote the complaint resolution letter, you know, the one that says As the president of this company, I take every complaint seriously? They can claim whatever roadblocks they want to. Doesn't change the lie.
At this point in the game you were the stereotypical guy that posts a false profile on the dating site to get as many emails returned as possible before disappointing his followers by sending someone else to their date. Kinda like...the GuyKawasaki impersonator I turned in. Hmm.
If you have worthy stuff to offer, be it from your guest tweeters or your feed, I'm fine with that--as long as it's made known before I hit the follow button, or before it occurs the first time you allow it. Otherwise, I'll unfollow, and much as you may wish to deny it or not like it, your brand has been damaged to me. Times me by a thousand people, maybe it will make a dent that means something to you. I don't know what your threshold is for caring on the numbers side, since numbers seems to be your biggest concern as far as twitter goes. (Mine starts at one, but different strokes...)
Critics are one thing, branding is another. I'm not here to rip you apart, but you need our feedback on this issue, it's more important in regards to branding than you may realize.
I'm not seeing the transparency you speak of, Guy, but I'm pretty sure I see right through your argument.
Best,
Michelle
(tweeting as herself even under her business name)
There's a difference between people looking to you, personally, as an arbiter of what's relevant, and looking to your brand. I'm guessing that's where the big dustup in this situation resides. Trust relationships are the currency in conversational media, and we still see the dichotomy between a person's expertise and a brand's value (though they're converging, which is awesome).
Eric raises an interesting point about the personal and professional brands. But isn't celebrity always a combination of the two?
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