Last Friday night, Paris Hilton found herself in a bit of a pickle with law enforcement in Las Vegas, landing herself in jail from 11:30 pm until 2:45 am Saturday morning. But less than an hour after she was released, per calculations by the Associated Press, she tweeted about being in bed watching Family Guy. Then a few minutes later, she tweeted that she was going to sleep.
Seems fishy, right? AP reporter Ken Ritter addressed the issue. “It was unclear if the tweets came from her, were posted by time-release or were sent by someone else. Hilton spokeswoman Dawn Miller wouldn’t comment when reached by an Associated Press reporter Saturday afternoon,” he wrote.
My guess is “by someone else.” Through a read of Paris’ tweets, it looks like she stays in a lot, loves to scrapbook, likes to sign her name to her tweets, uses subtle mentions of product placement, and has good spelling and impeccable grammar. That doesn’t sound like the Paris I’m familiar with.
The fact of the matter is, she most likely has an assistant or a publicist who contributes tweets to her feed, and unaware of her predicament, the assistant sent out the tweets or forgot to cancel scheduled tweets via a client.
As The New York Times pointed out in March 2009, it’s pretty common for celebrities like 50 Cent and politicians like President Obama to have ghost tweeters. For company brands this is more expected and understood. Who else but a social-media savvy PR person would be writing tweets for a retailer or a carmaker?
For the most part, brands take two paths to a populated Twitter feed:
- Brand messaging written by a stable of PR representatives. In this case, community and personal connection to the brand is formed by responses to tweets about them.
- Brands can identify a personality like Scott Monty for Ford or the celebrity’s own persona to speak for the brand in a personal voice.
No matter who is Tweeting for the brand, though, there are a few rules to observe at all times. Paris’ ghost tweeter, please pay attention.
- Be real: Updating the feed without reacting to real world events or community comments makes a brand seem out of touch and disconnected. Social media is all about groups and community. But when a brand sends out messages without paying attention to the outside world, the brand removes itself from the community and appears disinterested and impersonal.
- Have a consistent brand voice: Paris staying home every night doesn’t exactly match the public image of her being photographed at nightclubs. If a company really wants to connect with its customers, its social media persona should match public image it creates through other channels.
- Don’t rely on tools that make social media easier: There are many social media tools that allow Twitterers to schedule updates, thereby limiting the time it takes to maintain the feed. However, these tools can also lead to mistakes. They can post at random times, delete posts, post incomplete updates, or produce posts that are out of touch with events in the real world.
Twitter allows fans to personally connect with celebrity and company brands they love. But the social media effort is only a brand builder if the feed retains a sense of authenticity.
Tessa Barrera contributed to this story.
Twitter’s turning into a necessary evil just like Facebook. Gotta keep up with it, gotta use it for outreach, but it’s so time consuming to be authentic.
For a ghost tweeter to be successful for a celebrity, politician or even an executive he or she needs to be in close contact with the person. They need to be able to harness the person’s voice and really imagine their life experiences, observations and opinions. It’s a form of post-post modern acting, I’d say.