First a Little About the “Ethics” of Ghost Tweeting….

While at Search Engine Strategies Chicago I was interviewed by Web Pro News about the panel that I spoke on about Social Media and the ethics of “ghost tweeting”.  A lot of people had a lot to say about Guy Kawasaki and his use of Twitter back in March when he was the keynote speaker at SES NYC, most of it was not good in the eyes of the search marketing experts speaking about his keynote.  Granted, some of his tactics could definitely be classified as spammy, but at the end of the day, Guy Kawasaki is a marketer.

That being said, was his “Ghost Tweeting” ethical?  I’m more of the opinion it’s not a question of ethics, its more of a question of disclosure and expectations.  Knowing how busy Guy Kawasaki really is, most people likely wouldn’t have expected him to not be running his Twitter account by himself.  He’s got staff, he’s got help.  The problem with the situation was that he wasn’t disclosing it until Dave Fleet called him out on that fact.  Was his audience in an uproar about it?  Yes, some were, some stopped following, but since the disclosure, he’s gained more followers.

At the end of the day, its about the relationship you want to make with your audience.  Are you forming personal relationships with your audience, do they expect that from you?  Or are you just disseminating information like Guy does with his account?  There’s no real interaction going on, so the expectations are much lower. So what’s ethical, what’s not?  You’re audience is actually the one that will decide.  If you are trying to “trick” them by employing other people to tweet for you in a personal way, it will show through eventually.

And Then About Measuring Your Social Media….

Abby then went on to ask me about Measuring Your Social Media Strategy because Serengeti Communications put on a session about doing just that at SES Chicago.  Measuring has to be a key fundamental part of any Social Media Strategy you implement.  Without measuring how do you know what’s successful and what isn’t working?  What are you wasting your time on or what should you dedicate more resources too?  Along with that is your agency – SEO, PPC, PR or Advertising – selling you a laundry list of social media tactics because they know how to set up those types of things or is it because there’s been significant research done and you are going to be actively engaging with people in those social media channels?

It’s certainly not easy, and there’s no cookie cutter approach!

A lot of companies are facing a crisis of conscience. Should I use an agency to ghost write my blogs, tweets and other content? Is that ethical?  If it’s great content does it matter if it wasn’t made by my employees? Will my audience care as long as it’s great content? What if I can’t build the same level of content internally?  Li Evans and her co-panelist Andy Beal, CEO of Trackur, will tackle these and other tough questions in their Ghost Blogging, Tweeting, Content Production – Ethical? Does It Matter? at SES Chicago at 4:30pm on Monday, December 7th 2009.

If a picture really is worth a thousand words then you don’t want to miss out on Li Evans’ panel at SES Chicago on Images & Optimization at 1:45pm on Monday December 7^th, 2009.  Join her and her co-panelists Grant Crowell, Senior Media Analyst at ReelSEO.com, and Mat Siltala, Founder of Dream Systems Media, as they discuss everything from image search to geo-tags to accessibility issues to alt attributes to file sizes to image-specific search engines.

Not sure where to begin with how to build a strategy in social media?  Wondering what the difference is between just marketing and engaging?  How about measuring the affects of  implementing your social media media strategy?  Well then if you have the time, come to New York City on November 5th, 2009!

Nathan Linnell, our Director of Analytics and myself (Liana Li Evans) are conducting a training on social media strategy and measurement for Search Engine Strategies on that day for the early morning session of the training day.

In this social media training we’re going to teach antendees all about what goes into building a social media strategy and what do you need to know and do to measurement everything involved from successes to failures and when do you just stop, re-tweak and start again.  You’ll get a lot of take aways and you should be able walk away and apply your knowledge you’ve acquired to your own online media strategies.

If you are interested in attending the Social Media Training in New York city check out the SES Training page about the entire training day.    If you can’t make the social media strategy and measurement training in New York and are interested in getting training for your organization, feel free to contact us!