I ran into an interesting question the other day that I wanted to pose to you. A company I know will soon announce a white-label social network site for people to join and share ideas about the industry in which this company sells its services. Nothing new here, these kind of affiliate communities are sprouting all over the place.
The company who is sponsoring this is not one of those hip social media-savvy types that you hear quoted all the time — like Zappos, and Zappos, or like, say Zappos. Instead, they are a pretty traditional, transaction processing kind of place. Most of the their employees are not on Facebook or LinkedIn. Most have never heard of Twitter. The people who work there actually talk into their phones (oh how old-school) and leave messages on voice mail — all signs of age and oh-so-last-year behaviors.
The marketing department is running the social media campaign and has asked employees to participate in the community once it has launched. But they suggested doing so a “regular people”, not as employees representing the company. This did not go over so well. Most of the employees would be uncomfortable just going into an online social network and discussing their ideas about a topic that some consider private. So getting employees participation is going to be a challenge. But then there is the message about not representing the company (though being an employee). Sure sounds like astroturfing to me.
But then I thought, just maybe this is not so wrong. After all, the company wants this online community to thrive. And we know that an empty community is an anti-pattern for participation. You have to pre-seed some content in a community to jump-start it. A company should be able to ask their employees to help do that. And if the employees really do care about the topic at hand (which I bet many do) then their participation would be an authentic representation of themselves — or a least it could be.
So let me ask you — Is the company doing the right thing by asking employees to help jump-start their community effort? Or is the lack of full disclosure, along with the general sense of discomfort on the part of the employees just too creepy for this to be a good idea? I’d love to hear what you say about this — convince me one way or the other. I’m leaning pretty heavy on the “thumbs-down” side, but I’m open to a creative and convincing argument. So please comment below.
Update [Sept 29,2009]: Thanks for the many comments below. I have two follow up items on this topic.
- The majority of people who commented on this felt that something is not kosher with this approach. I respect the lone voice (Jamie) who sees this the other way. I’m very glad that there is at least one person who sees another side to this story. It helps put proper perspective on this case. However, the general sentiment is “disclose” – or be branded as evil. I also thank those who offered alternatives that allow some other path to success. This reinforces the value of conversation.
- I still think there is some “grey” space here. In this case, the “community site” is explicitly sponsored by a company (prominent logo on the front page), but is not about the company’s products. So community members are not “selling”, they are “sharing ideas” about a lifestyle issue. Moreover, the site’s terms of use has an interesting text that seems to carve a grey space too.
Make Appropriate Disclosures. It is up to you what you say on the Site or in your User Materials, but you still must obey the law and make all appropriate disclosures. For example, just as you would expect someone endorsing a product to reveal that they are getting paid or are receiving a benefit for their endorsement, if you are receiving payment or benefit for mentioning or promoting something, you must also make a disclosure.
This clause does indicate that members may choose not to disclose, but are expected to disclose when their participation is being compensated for. In this case, employees of the sponsoring company are not being paid to participate – so technically they are not expected (by these terms) to disclose their relationship to the sponsoring company. So if they want to join the conversation, they can. If they do, they help generate more activity — and this is mutually beneficial. But it’s not the same as the classic astroturfing case where employees pose as non-employees to fake support for the company or products. Grey-ish. Personally, I’d advise employees to disclose their affiliation in their profile or stay off the site. Thank you all for helping raise the conversation to a level of improved clarity.
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I am inclined to give it a thumbs down, if only for being an advocate of transparancy. But it also sounds like a company that wants to jump on the social media bandwagon without understanding the underlying dynamics and what it means for your company culture.
Jan — you are correct. I think the company I was talking to wants to jump in and I have a feeling they may also step in it along the way. Of course they have a social media PR company who is guiding them. (oy vey? – Let’s see what transpires, I’d like to see this succeed.)
My suggestion to them was one of sequence. (I posed something about this here.) They plan on both internal and external “social – makeover” projects. I think they need to do the internal one first. This way when they launch externally (where stakes are higher) they will 1. know what they are doing, 2. be more comfortable, and 3. reveal the right message when they do the external project. Here’s what I mean: When they implement something that brings external transparency, they reveal to the outside what is on the inside. So I suggest they fix that first. Otherwise the external project just reveals the ugly internal chaos. Why do that?? (Answer: because Marketing has the budget now, and the Intranet Architecture team does not.)
But I’m hoping for someone to share with me something that I’m missing. Could asking your employees to act like regular participants be viewed as supportive to a shared success? I’d love to hear the argument against transparency here. If there is a good argument to be made.
Thumbs down. If it feels wrong, it probably is!
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Gil, I think Astroturfing is awesome and look forward to the day when it is not a PR scheme but standard operating procedure that employees interact with social media on behalf of their company. If people want to have a job in 2010 they have to embrace their company values and promote whatever their company sells (don’t they all sell something?). This can not be dished off to a PR company or a “Social Media Consultant.” It must be grown organically by the people who know and understand the product, and have a direct interest in selling it. Great subject area to hit.
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Thanks Jamie! Indeed I think the company is simply expecting employees to “tow the line” and support the very company that pays them a paycheck every month. So indeed, there is play to corporate-loyalty and citizenship. But, and this is the rub, shouldn’t the employees disclose that they happen to be employees? Wouldn’t it look bad if someone found that some large percentage of participants in the social network are paid “shills”?
A bit more information: I think they suggested that they don’t disclose their status because the social network’s topic is personal in nature, and perhaps employees don’t want to be identified as such within the workplace. (Hey John, are we still on for the 10:00 staff meeting? oh, and how’s that rash you were talking about on-line.)
Involving employees in social projects is a good thing…at least conceptually. As a matter of fact, things get much more complicated when you try to turn the concept into action.
The discussion about knowing if this is a good idea or not may be endless. It depends on lot of things, corporate culture not being the least. But rather than wondering if it’s good or not, I think we should wonder if it will work or not. And there is a simple way to know that.
Even inconciously, employees always balance risk vs opportunities to know what to do or not to do, above all when they are asked to be themselves in a corporate context. Try to find if (and why…) they are more likely to see this kind of participation as a risk or as an opportunity and you’ll have both the answer and what to leverage (if possible) to change things.
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Thanks Bertrand — indeed this is a theoretical question this week. But I’ll be watching to see what transpires in the weeks ahead. Perhaps the reality will surface some great lessons.
Well, I can undertstand how this is not quite black and white. It is not as bad as earlier astroturfing controversies in the early blogging days.
I remember one example where the principals of a J2EE app server company were posting using false identites (mostly about how great the app server was).
Primarily, the employees need to not lie. They need to use their real names. If there are going to purposefully obfuscate their employer then they are probably crossing the line.
Personally I would encourage the marketing department to let employees proudly post as employees.
A community that is made up of a large % of employees is better than no community at all.
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Mark let me acknowledge that you were the one who introduced me to the term “astroturfing” many years ago. Thank you. It’s an important concept as companies move to transparent, socially mediated conversations while workers totally interweave their work and non-work identities.
In this case the employees are not being asked to pose as happy customers — then there’s no question at all. But they are asked to generate activity and pre-seed the community with stuff. And this might work if the employees are the type who would do this anyway. But in this company, I just don’t see it. So it’s been a strange conversation there. I don’t think anyone wants to speak out against the idea either. Strange indeed.
A conudrum . . .
I think this begs for a follow-on post on the dos/dont’s for transperancy in company-sponsored online communities and social networks. That said, the company’s industry will also determine the rights/wrongs and dos/don’ts. Pharma has rules of engagement for social media that are derived from FDA regs, etc.
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Right you are! I don’t want to give away too many details out of respect for the company, but it is in a regulated industry. Just not as regulated as Pharma. But yes you are correct to note that the industry context is very relevant.
Hi Gil,
If the culture is not there, then it will not feel “authentic”. I say that for a company to get employees to participate in the conversations in external communities, get them to collaborate internally first using what is available to with Enterprise 2.0. Internal peers can provide support and guidance.
When you learn how to ride a bike, you have training wheels. Once you’ve acquired the right skills, you can take off the wheels and ride off into the world.
The US Airforce provides some great guidelines for posting, one of them is to always identify that you’re part of the AF in your response – this makes sense to me.
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Mark, I agree — and in particular with the “learn on the inside first” part. See my April post: http://www.gilyehuda.com/enterprise-20/practice-inside-to-express-yourself-outside/
Hi Gil,
I had dinner with Bertrand Duperrin (@bduperrin, one of France’s few thought leaders on E2.0) two days ago and we had a very good discussion regarding motivation that would be interesting in the light of Social CRM. The main question that came up was “why should an employee you spend time collaborating with others outside of their department/group/unit when they have a dayjob to do?”.
The answer to this would be to make it part of the job description, and part of the Manager’s com plan. Rather than have a Manager take on 100% of an employee’s salary in his department’s budget, let him take for example 70%, and have the other part financed by another department or even corporate budget so that it becomes ingrained that the employee’s time is used for shared, collaborative activities. Both the employee and the Manager now have motivators to work with others.
If there is not such a fundamental change and a formalisation, there is a risk that collaboration gets swept under the rug and people soon get back to concentrating meeting the objectives of their current job description.
I would rather see the company identify a small group of “friendly” customers to pilot with, sort of in a soft launch. Once, they get the kinds of interactions they are looking for, then they can publicize and scale.
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Brilliant. Thank you.
This is a great post Gil.
I think there should be a “do no evil” mentality with any social activity, but we live in a world where that is often not the case. Rumors abound, and many have found the Internet Socialsphere is much easier to manipulate than the Real World Socialsphere, though not so easy as to prevent the ring of truth from eventually triumphing.
Companies should adhere to the concepts of honesty, authenticity, and transparency wherever possible, but above all, wherever doing otherwise would mean “doing evil.”
Cheers,
BW
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Very important question being debated here in a well-written post and enlightening comments. Employees not disclosing their affiliation in this social network is not necessarily “evil”. However, the company’s policy should direct employees to disclose their employment relationship if questioned by another community member.
My guess is that many employee posts will be easily spotted as such. Their authors should not be put in a position where they have to lie about, or apologize for, their relationship with the company.
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Larry, this may be an acceptable compromise for them. The community is intended to discuss matters that most people actually care about — and employees are people too. So encouraging them to act as people is not “evil” per se. But I’m worried about the follow up impression that is made when someone is “outed” as an employee. In this case (because of the specific community they have in mind – which I’m not at liberty to describe), I think that employees will not be spotted as such. So they might “get away” with this act of pre-seeding the community. In fact there could be some real benefits to the employees (especially as we talk about the internal e2.0 roll out) to get used to being in an online community.
I appreciate you weighing in on this question.
Gil,
Interesting remarks and followup conversations on the topic.
As I’m reading it, the matter is one of the importance of authenticity in how one (vs how not) attains a level of PR and buzz that leads to success – i.e., avoiding PR “noise” (what we hear and ignore) and achieving PR “music” (what we hear, appreciate and that which want to hear/see more).
“Astroturfing” vs “pre-seeding”…is it the same, and is it acceptable? I’ll agree with many of the others remarks above. If the product/service is of value, favorable comments from those who possess “limited or remote interest” conveys vastly more trust and believability/credibility than those who have “direct interest” in seeing the product/service succeed. Self promotion is quite acceptable, and expected (one would certainly hope that you like your own creation). But feigning independence or attempting to camouflage it, as which appears to be the case in your article, can be a PR and reputation killer, as it gets squarely at the matter of trust – both in the company, as well as in those who are “asked” to make favorable remarks, in spite of how they might truly feel.
If they’ve not yet done so, doing beta tests with select clients, having press involvement, or independent panels, or a contest, or….any number of alternate methods that convey unbiased feedback, response and support for the product is a much more desirable trajectory to take.
A worthwhile followon article might be about brand health, or moreso, “what wounds/kills brands”
Thank you again for a great discussion starter.
Best regards
Rick
And thank you for your very wise and thoughtful reply. Indeed my intention is as you understand it — to start a conversation and share some learning.
Nothing gray about this. You’re talking about employees deliberately failing to disclose that they work for the company that sponsors the network and by whom they were asked to contribute to it. That failure to disclose is a flat-out breach of ethics and if revealed will cause far more harm to the organization than the value they would get from seeding the network with content. Transparency is a mandate these days, and this kind of opaque behavior is contemptible.
I wonder, though, why those managing the project think there is no value in employees disclosing their association with the company. Research shows that people believe employees should be part participating in social spaces, and the visibility of employees should encourage participation from others, not stifle it.
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Shel, Thanks for your comment. I honestly think there is a shade of grey in this particular case, which is why I’m raising the question. The social network is going to focus on a personal-lifestyle topic that is related to the industry that the company is in — but it’s not going to be about the company or its productsper se. But now that I think about it — I wonder if every page will have a nice dose of ads that are company sponsored. It has not yet been released publicly, so I really don’t know.
BTW, I’m not involved with the project and have not spoken the sponsors — only to some of the employees of the company who are a bit confused about the whole thing. They want to be good corporate citizens and help their company with this project, but they are not very familiar with the whole idea of any social network, let alone one that their company will sponsor.
I think those managing the project worry that employees would not want to participate and disclose personal information about themselves that their bosses would read. (Yes, sounds silly to publish information that everyone else in the world can read and think that it’s still private.) So my current impression is that no one is trying to spoof customers, but that someone may not have thought this through — hence me wanting to open this up and see what the parameters are in case I can get an audience with the project sponsors and offer to help. That said — I really appreciate your clarity of thought. (BTW, I have your Blogging for Business book on my desk and enjoy it!)
I would think that if the company had a supportive *internal* environment – good company morale, and passionate employees to a mutual cause and purpose in the first place, employees would *want* to jump in and help – as it should be. Afterall, supposedly it’s a one company “team”.
Perhaps this is the missing or a fundamental issue – which of course would extend externally to purporting that the company is a socially aware / community company, when they are not. Therefore, the whole concept of the “community campaign” smells like a scam – from start to finish. Thumbs down.
I don’t think a new external community is hurt by “insiders” being visible at the offshoot, and if anything – it is good.
At our company, we moved our support forums to GetSatisfaction.com abruptly last summer, and at the beginning – the only members of our “community” were employees – about 20. Off-balance to the outside masses? Indeed. Possible challenges when you abruptly change? Indeed.
But if anything, it showed eager support – and I think the many supporters jump-started the community to be a success almost overnight.
Am I missing something? You don’t have to misrepresent to get support.
If there’s value to begotten – they will come. If not, they won’t anyways. If they smell scam, they definitely should not (and hopefully will not!)
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P.S. Nice dress !!! Funny.
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Thanks! Finally someone commented on me finding the perfect dress for this occasion!
. It is both astroturf and supportive.
Excellent points. Had they been developing internal communities first, this whole thing would feel more natural to them. And they would know how to represent themselves with authenticity. Thanks for sharing about the support community – it’s interesting and it makes sense that employees are very engaged! There’s nothing wrong, and everything right, with that.
Gotta go with “stupid idea”. Here’s a crazy idea, instead of wasting time on that why not have your staff spend time with your customers figuring out how to make your product or service better. It does remind me of my other pet peeve, vendor blog spam. I’m truly amazed at the effort some of my competitors put into systematically posing as customers to promote themselves on every bit of blog coverage we get. Usually it’s the same vendors and same fake comments; very obvious.
As Yoda might say “Clear it is, hiding intentions and corporate identity is a game with only one outcome.”
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