The brand…behind the scene

The advantages that social media has to offer are best derived by participating. When brands understand that, we get to see Facebook pages (or profiles) and twitter accounts. While these might display the brand name, the interactivity of social media makes it seem like communicating to a person. As far as social media tools go, compared to Facebook pages/ a YouTube account, a Twitter account is perhaps more difficult to handle, thanks to the real time interaction required (though it’s possible on Facebook too now). That perhaps explains the rising instances of ghost twittering – where a personality or a brand pays someone else to tweet on their behalf. While many examples have been cited, from Obama to Britney and 50 cent, I’ll focus on the companies/brands.

In these early days of social media, there are very few companies which have an organised social media strategy.  (a good global list, and the Indian version of brands on Twitter) In the global list, it can be seen that the organisations are represented by their own employees, and in many cases they belong to the marketing function. But what’s interesting are the handles – some use the brand name, some use the person’s name and some others use a combination of both.

In my last post (partly) on this topic, I had supported the usage of the brand name with the account being handled by “multi functional teams which can communicate with consumers on different aspects with authority and domain knowledge”, but it’s obvious that no ‘one size fits all’ policy works in social media, especially when people value dealing with other people more than impersonal brand logos.

I am still not sure of the person representing a brand with his/her own name, since I wonder how both the personal and brand personas can coexist in one account, especially if they have differing personalities. Also, like I’ve said earlier, one also has to wonder how long the employee will stay in the organisation and when he/she leaves, who owns the equity generated thus far. (even in the absence of a social media strategy, there is always the typical case of the lone enthusiast bringing his brand on to twitter only for the account to lose steam after he/she leaves) In a one to one marketing scenario, will marketers’ personal brand equity on services like Twitter also be of value to future employers? I quite like the idea of a combo handle (person and company). It allows a whole lot of customising – different people for different domains within the organisation, replacing users etc, while still giving the human touch to the account.

The other scenario which interests me is an agency handling the brand’s social media strategy. Would they handle the twitter account after disclosing that they are only speaking for the brand? What impact does that have on the one-to-one conversations that the brand is supposed to have with its consumers on social media? Does it make a case for agencies to stop at monitoring and ensuring that the spokesperson is still an employee of the brand?

All of this is keeping in mind that a twitter account is only a part of the social media strategy and thus the role of an agency could possibly be justified for many other reasons. But at a broader level, if a lot of social media is going to be one-on-one marketing, it would make sense for organisations to figure out who would be the “one” representing them, and how much he/she/they would be empowered. Of course, it also makes sense to figure out whether they should be on Twitter at all.

until next time, handle it

Update: Just saw a term for this –  Brandividuals