Comments on: Fake Internet Personas Don’t Work and are Just Plain Garbage

By: How the Influencer Project taught me to stop caring about influence « The Conversational Brand

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 18:41:55 +0000

[...] and Twitter as an indicator of influence. They speak with pride about their automated tweets and ghost personas. But relationships can’t be automated. If digital media has taught us anything it is that, no [...]

By: Greg Hollingsworth

Greg Hollingsworth — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 18:48:00 +0000

I agree completely. If a company makes a commitment to engage it’s customers it needs to be honest engagement, not a ghost campaign run by a PR firm.

By: Beth Harte

Beth Harte — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:11:00 +0000

@GregHollingsworth, thanks for continuing the conversation! We are in complete agreement on this one. Personally, I think if a company can’t dedicate the internal resources, be the sole voice and the executive team isn’t behind it, they should consider engaging in another way. There is no rule that says companies must have a blog.

I know some social media folks think outsourcing blog writing is okay, but I don’t agree with it.

For example, if a customer reads GM’s FastLane blog for years…they come to know and trust that person(s) based on their blogging. Then what happens if that customer meets the GM blogger in person and they are nothing like what/how they wrote and what they said. The customer will immediately know something is not genuine and it will affect their preception of that person and the GM brand. That’s what you don’t want to happen.

By: Greg Hollingsworth

Greg Hollingsworth — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 00:03:00 +0000

Beth,

I certainly understand what you're saying, but if a company is going to venture in to blogging, anonymity (at least to me) rings false.

I spent two years blogging on my personal blog with a nom de plume, and yes, my friends certainly knew it was my blog. There is nothing wrong with a nom de plume when we're talking about analysis or commentary, but when your goal is to engage your customers, using a pen name seems in my opinion to be half hearted.

By: Beth Harte

Beth Harte — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 19:15:00 +0000

@GregHollingsworth, through this conversation there have been several types of blogging personas mentioned: fake, ghost and anonymous.

Here’s my take/opinion on the three:

1. Fake persona bloggers. It’s just wrong. This particular person was pretending to be personas such as a housewife, a gay male, etc. Companies need to be made aware that this type of blogging, as part of their marketing strategy can only harm their brands. Liz at Spiral Scratch has a great recap of the session here: http://tinyurl.com/5ef4sk

2. Ghost bloggers are typically consultants hired by companies to blog for them. The consultants receive direction from the company and act as the voice of the company. They blog under the names of people within the company. Personally, I think this treads on the thin ice of transparency and authenticity. Lewis Green has a post about this at MarketingProf’s Daily Fix: http://tinyurl.com/59b9c8

3. Anonymous bloggers are typically individuals who want to blog under a nom de plume. I have done it and most people who knew me knew it was my blog. Others people do it for privacy reasons. Some anonymous bloggers can be harmful and some are just average people sticking their toes into the blogosphere and are trying to maintain their identity for security reasons.