“Your product tweets?” I was somewhat incredulous at the claim.
“Is it for customer service?” another person asked.
“Nope, just for press releases and announcements. Things like that.”
It was only a few hours after I first heard about “Ghost Tweeting“.
One of these days, I hope that we’ll figure it out. That the internet is not just another place to advertise and push out press releases and advertisements. That presence on the internets is not merely having an account, not mere name recognition – but merit through being interesting.
If you haven’t heard of the Cluetrain Manifesto, maybe this is your chance to enlighten yourself (you can read the book for free). The key quotation here is this:
Markets do not want to talk to flacks and hucksters. They want to participate in the conversations going on behind the corporate firewall. De-cloaking, getting personal: We are those markets. We want to talk to you.
Do I want to talk to a product? Hell, no. Do I want to talk to the people who use it? The people who made it? The people who design it? Hell, yes.
At Millenicon, John Scalzi was asked if an internet presence was necessary for an author. “No,” he said, clarifying that if you were already blogging and tweeting, then go right ahead. But setting up a site, a blog, a Twitter account, a Facebook profile, or whatever to just sell yourself or your product? Don’t bother.