Enough about me, let’s talk about me!
By Carman Pirie: Jan 19, 2010
It has become de rigueur for brands who want to show that they “get” social media to show a stream of Twitter mentions about their brand on their website. You’ll find them under the heading of “What people are saying about us” or “The latest buzz” or some such nod to being conversational and transparent.
When you see someone doing that, do yourself a favour: go to Twitter Search and enter the brand’s name in the search box. You’ll find one of two things, generally speaking. You’ll either find that the brand in question is publishing a stream of tweets that is real-time (or close to it) and generally reflective of the online sentiment towards the brand or, alternatively, you may find that the tweet stream they’re publishing has been rather heavily sanitized to only show positive mentions.
I can understand the appeal of sanitizing your brand’s Twitter mentions, but it’s incredibly short-sighted. As people become more and more comfortable with the technology behind social media, they’ll call bullshit on this pretty quickly. Increasingly, you’ll only be fooling yourself. Further, when I see companies who are self-proclaimed social media evangelists (can we ban that title pls and tks?) publishing a Twitter stream that is sanitized to the point of being 100% positive and 3-days old, they’re not only fooling themselves but also damaging their reputation in the process.
January 19, 2010
2:11 pm
Bang on…sanitized tweets are advertising, not transparent engagement.
January 19, 2010
3:12 pm
Would you really want a bunch of “your product fucking sucks” showing up on your website promoting your product/service?
Internet users are fickle and jump on mindless bandwagons easily (hence the popularity of twitter) All it takes is an “influential” person to somehow feel wronged by the company/product to flood the feed with completely negative messages.
Where do you draw the line? 1 negative comment? 10?
It is no different than traditional advertising with “customer feedback”
January 19, 2010
3:53 pm
Appreciate the comment Brian. First, I would say that if you’re going to sanitize the feed, then simply label it “Good stuff people are saying about us” or some such thing… be honest about it rather than suggesting it’s the unvarnished truth when it isn’t. Claiming transparency and then sanitizing the feed isn’t on in my view.
Naturally, I imagine most companies wouldn’t be interested in having “your product fucking sucks” scattered about their website. That said, step one should likely be making a product that doesn’t suck. Barring that, an open and transparent presence online could be used to respond to these negative comments with a view towards building an understanding amongst customers and prospects about the features and benefits of said product, while addressing its supposed shortcomings or presenting facts to the contrary. It should be noted that many companies keep negative product reviews on their site… understanding that the goodwill generated by being honest outweighs the downside of negative reviews (Dell and Apple come immediately to mind).
Lastly, if we sanitize everything… if we only put out what is 100% positive… then nobody will believe it. “Nobody’s perfect”, etc. Further, if everyone took that approach, then we wouldn’t approve comments that don’t agree with the original post in a blog… and that would keep us from having lovely discussions such as this one.
January 20, 2010
6:14 pm
A client either gets “it” or they don’t. If they insist on putting a twitter feed box on their website and then censor it, they’re clearly not ready to do this. Heather was right. It becomes traditional “push the message out” advertising. And who likes to be sold. Not me.
BTW, good work on your blog. Just happened by, and was motivated to respond.
January 21, 2010
8:07 am
Tks for the kind words re: the blog Allan – much appreciated! Yeah, @Heather summed it up WAY better than I did!
January 29, 2010
12:09 pm
Hi Carman,
Awesome little article. I’m really interested in Twitter and how it can be used for a business setting. The ways I’ve seen it used are either – a company that “gets it” like you guys, showing your true selves and personalities, or – companies or organizations that use it just to push their events, etc, which quickly gets tuned out.
How can a non-profit or an organization that is run by a concensus (like a board of volunteers) use Twitter effectively? if at all?
Also – the fonts look funny on my browser and hurt my eyes a little. That’s my only complaint on an otherwise awesome site.
January 29, 2010
12:17 pm
Thanks for your comments, Leah. With regards to the font question, what browser and OS are you using?
February 1, 2010
10:23 am
Hi Leah,
Thank you for your comment! For non-profit and for-profit organizations alike, there are a wide variety of ways to use Twitter. Like everything, clarity on the “why” will help determine the “what”. Your specific concerns surrounding the org being run by a consensus may be able to be covered off by having jointly agreed upon interaction guidelines under your belt prior to going live.
cheers, cp