Someone asked me recently how I come up with content for my blog. Honestly, when I started it, I had that same question but if you are on Twitter daily–as I am–there is unlimited content and ideas coming out of the “tweet stream” across my iPhone. Just today, I saw some debate on the benefits of hiring a “virtual assistant” to “tweet” for you. Really? I was amazed but I’m sure people are doing it and thinking of doing it.
And while it would be nice to have some type of auto-thank you, it would diminish the value of having a conversation and building relationships on Twitter. My gut reaction to this idea of “ghost tweeting” is simply this: FAIL. If Twitter has given us ANYTHING at all, it’s access, truth, and a basic “leveling of the playing field” to get information out. Don’t mess it up by getting a bunch of hired auto-tweeters on Twitter! If I want to follow Chis Brogan (@chrisbrogan) I want to at least feel and believe that it’s him on Twitter answering questions and responding. If not, why would I follow him? So, here are my top reasons that we should keep it REAL on Twitter and why you should not hire or allow someone else to “tweet” for you:
1. It’s not you
2. Enough said
Can anybody really take your spot, READ your mind, be You on Twitter? I don’t think so. So no matter how busy or important you get (and trust me, it’s not that big of a deal) having someone else post your tweets is FAKE. Which goes against the grain of social media’s evolving benefits of transparency and honesty. As a PR firm, we are asked often to Tweet information, events etc. for our clients. We disclose it when we do and I’d recommend that when companies or businesses “tweet” (and often they have multiple people tweeting) they disclose the name(s) of the official party. When it comes to individual brands and/or high profile people, if you hire someone else to tweet for you, at least disclose it. In today’s corporate climate that values trust and transparency, why wouldn’t you want to be you on Twitter?
I completely agree with your point that twittering should be done personally and not through someone else. But, what about people who don’t realize these things? How can you make them feel the importance of conversation when they are crazy after automating things and saving time? I’m thinking the answer would be that we ourselves should follow the right path and let others do what they want. I want to know your thoughts on this one (maybe this sparks an idea for another blogpost 😉 ).
Well, I am kinda new to twitter, and while going through the stages of learning I stumbled upon several users like you describe, my response was to unfollow them. I don’t want to read information from users that use a 24/7 API with pre-injected tweets, I don’t want to follow users who are not socializing. and looking at all those users trying to promote automatic tweeting makes me sick to the bone! . “Go to hawaii and let our Super Auto Twitter do the job” yeah it will do the job, of making people abandon your twitter and stop following you! get real, Social media is about being social, if I want to talk to BOTS I will go try mIRC
Completely agree. But what about scheduling tweets? I was once subjected to someone’s malfunctioning scheduler – two dozen tweets at once – and it really made me wonder how many people are doing it and what are the downfalls?
I personally think that scheduling tweets is also bad, it’s not as bad as leaving your whole twitter to automation, yet pre-scheduled tweets have that look to them that makes the user understand that they were not posted by a human. so if you keep scheduled tweets on the down-low then it may work, but abusing this will bring to followers abandoning you. I have a post I wrote about BOTS (Zombies) in Social Networks. here is the link http://ow.ly/14MJ5
@Amy: would you be able to provide an example where your firm has tweeted on behalf of your client? It would be cool to see an example.
@Ksenia: I schedule up to five tweets per day and space them out because I don’t want them to dominate someone’s tweet stream. I invest the time putting together a series of tweets that I think would be of interest to my followers. The scheduled tweets are information/knowledge sharing based. When I tweet live it is more personal and conversational.