The well tweeted NYT article today revealed the obvious — that celebrity twitter streams are maintained by ghost twits. For those readers who did not understand the above sentence — don’t worry, I know that it does not make any sense to someone who is not involved with the Twitter tool. So instead I’ll share a story that will make sense. This is somewhat similar to the story I shared in my post “Don’t Blog, Connect“, this story is about blogging and authenticity. And this is also a true story.
I received a call from “Don”, the CIO of a large company, who is a client of mine. He wanted to start blogging and asked for my help. He introduced me to “Linda”, his director of communications, who was going to be helping him with some of the tactical issues. So it was important that I get to know her. I ask Don to tell me about the back-story — what’s going on that is prompting this question? Why blog now?
Don explained that his company runs an employee survey every year, and he got low scores from the employees in his division. They don’t feel like they know what’s going on at the senior levels of the company. They feel disconnected. They feel senior management is distant and unauthentic. So the consulting company that runs the annual survey suggested that a blog would be a great way to communicate to the employees and get them to feel more connected.
OK, this sounds pretty reasonable, and I’ve seen the pattern before too. So basically, the employees want to connect with you, and you want to use the blog to help bridge that distance and connect back — right? So, how can I help you move the ball forward?
Don said that he and Linda had many questions about blogging. First of all, how long should a post be? what should it be about? do you have to allow for comments on a blog? how often should they email the employees to remind them about the blog?
Hmm, I thought, reasonable questions – topic, comments, OK. But that “email the employees” does not seem right. I wonder how they are thinking about this. Let’s probe some more.
Don then explained that he’s going to have head off to his next meeting in a couple of minutes, but that I should continue discussing this with Linda, since she’s going to be writing the blog and it’s really more important that she gets the details right.
WHAT?? Your employees are asking for an authentic connection with their CIO, and his response is to have his CommMgr ghost-write for him? How exactly will this differ from the monthly e-newsletter email that they all ignore? The one with all the well-written stories of successful pet-projects and employees who spend their weekends building homes for the poor (while the rest of the staff is debugging code and responding to emails).
So I asked if they both thought that employees would welcome this blog and see it as something that addresses their needs. They admitted that they were not sure. So I asked if they thought about next year’s survey. After all, what’s worse than being considered unauthentic? Think about it. (I did not want to say this — but the answer is “proving to them beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are right about you.”)
Sure, getting the message to the masses is important. And yes, CIOs are busy, and some cannot write well. If people ignore emails but love RSS readers then you can re-purpose your e-newsletter into a blog. There are some advantages to this. But it’s not solving the real communications issue. There were much deeper issues here, about trust that we had to deal with first. And we did — but that’s another story.
Ghosts-writers, ghost-bloggers, and ghost-twitters are out there. It should be no surprise to you. It’s not bad to communicate out, to broadcast — it’s just half of the idea (at best). Your readers want more. They want the real you. If you fake it — they will know. You cannot fool them, you will only fool yourself.
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I’ll follow @WhiteHouse when it follows at least 200 people. http://bit.ly/13zzs7
Hi Gil,
Just to add, most execs are painfully aware that once it’s in writing, it’s public, so careful wording to avoid being misquoted is important. Sometimes what we say, does not get interpreted as what we mean, there’s too many cases where big names have fallen due to the ill timed comment. I wonder if society will ever get beyond looking for and getting excited about the scandal or the contentious angle…….
Thanks Jeff and Phil — you are both correct. Indeed executives do leverage the help of communications professionals to punch-up the message. I don’t fault them for that. That’s why my conclusion is that they are simply accomplishing only part of the job — that being talking with style. But not engaging, not listening, and not presenting themselves to the conversation. If they want that — ghosting will not accomplish it.
I’m reminded of the great line in Toy Story — when Woody tells Buzz “That’s not flying — that’s falling with style”.
I see plenty of celebrity twitter accounts where they follow 10 people and have 25,000 people follow them. Sure, they now have a voice on twitter. But that’s the easy part of communication. Twitter makes it easy for us to see this ratio. But I find that readers can detect the ratio of listening — and they value it. In fact, I bet that if you thought I did not really listen to you, you would not bother to comment here. So I acknowledge your point. I don’t fault the executives, I simply let them know that they can only get so far with the strategy they have used in the past. If they want more, they have to bring more of themselves to the table.
Nice article. Unfortunately, executives are all too used to ghost writers, who help with all aspects from press releases to books to speaches. Social media, blogging etc. is just being seen as another tool in the corp. communications tool box. To their credit, the good execs communciate the core message and the ghost writer is the one putting it in a punchy digestable form. The sad part, is that Tweets and BLogs are supposed to be personal and this gets lost if it’s written by one or even more ghost writers !
Hi Gil,
Great post, and a concise summary of an all-too-common situation. CIOs (and CxOs for that matter) don’t always have the comfort level for the authentic communication that their teams crave. Often, communication professionals have to ‘sneak up’ on the idea to get buy-in. If they don’t, the ghostwriting trap is an easy one to fall into. Time, writing skills, and a perception of professional vulnerability can all contribute to the decision to ‘have the communications people do it.”
The conversation around authenticity has to start with the potential blogger (or email writer for that matter) and be sensitive to generational perceptions of leadership, company culture, and individual style. Communication professionals should be able to coach their leaders towards greater authenticity over time – often doing live web-based meetings / virtual town halls can help break the ice. Then it’s a natural transition from “plain talk” to “plain text” to get the non-ghost CxO blogger online.
I got in the mood to blog. Ghosts: http://bit.ly/gBps Good/Bad ppl to take advice from: http://bit.ly/NAwao I still have more to write.
Blog post on ghosts and authenticity: http://bit.ly/4kzt8D