The following tweet is from my friend Ian Sohn
As soon as I saw this I asked Ian if I could use for a post. Because Ian makes a good point. Anyone else feel the same way? I mean, once in a while you get a good one phantom twitter account. The BP oil account @BPGlobalPR was funny when it first started. In fact, an interesting outcome from this was that it had more followers than the real BP account and in essence served as the voice for the general public to BP. The reason for its existence seemed altruistic. It was kept anonymous by a man named Leroy Stick (explanation of the name), raised a nice amount of money for the gulf coast and set the expectations for other brands on how the world expects them to deal with with crisis management.
Then, others came around, and I will spare everyone (all 15 readers) of going through them all.
A notably funny and popular one was the fake Rham Emanuel Twitter account @mayoremanuel . This was an interesting case too, mostly due to the way it was written. Lots and Lots of profanity, which to the general public can cause confusion as this is a token characteristic of the real Mayer Emanuel. So, other than being funny at a opportune time, I dont know what other benefit this served. Rham Emmanuel did stick to his word and donate the money he promised to the cause of Dan Sinkers choice.
And then comes the Brox Zoo Cobra @BronxZoosCobra. The owner of it deserves a pat on the back for being the quickest to register the account, but other than that, it was total overkill.
I speculate, but I am assuming that the reason people work so hard at building these fake and humorous twitter accounts at this juncture is to sign a book or get fame that way FMyLife, @Shitmydadsays and others did.
But there is a lesson to all this (and I got a big chunk of this at the Radian6 conference last week). If your going to use social media, then you better “really” use it (and actually, everyone should be using it now and days which is a conversation for another time).
Social media isn’t just about how you respond during a crisis to get “on the record” that you are aware of the issue. If thats your approach, then you clearly missed the point of what I wrote above regarding BP. In this day and age, the world wont stand for crap and fluff. Its crucial that you give context to the crisis, give updates and share progress. No room for secrets. Speak with people, address their concerns and certainly don’t be fake. Be real. Follow, your audience, know who they are, listen to them and engage with them. Or you might just find yourself the victim of a fake twitter account. And good luck getting that fixed. Talk about pouring gasoline on a fire. It sounds like it might make more sense to just do it right from the beginning instead of making the same mistakes as others. What a novel idea!