Verification Isn’t Enough When It Comes To Twitter PR
Using Twitter for business makes plenty of sense. It’s a great way to reach out to followers while promoting yourself and your company to potentially millions of users. However, despite their bulletproof system to determine the authenticity of accounts,Twitter isn’t always the most trustworthy. News Corp. discovered this the difficult way when an account claiming to be Wendi Deng, the wife of chairman and chief executive Rupert Murdoch, was verified as authentic… except it wasn’t. Twitter PR is a powerful tool, yet even News Corp. has a few lessons to learn in terms of using Twitter for business.
Very shortly before the start of the new year, Murdoch launched his Twitter account, using the handle @rupertmurdoch. Hours after he did, the handle @wendi_deng popped up and was verified by Twitter almost instantaneously. While the handle tweeted to her followers and Murdoch’s handle, a a spokeswoman from the company stated that both accounts were real and News Corp. accepted the validity of the fake handle without consulting the couple. The tweets sounded authentic, so authentic that no one from the company dug into it.
Tuesday afternoon was when everything came crashing down, with the owner of the Wendi Deng account admitting that it was a fake. While there is nothing truly unethical about their desire to create a handle under her name (think of all of the Harry Potter and Lady Gaga accounts out there in Twitter that are not real), it brings into question how effective Twitter PR is. In the three days that the account was up it garnered thousands of followers. Although none of the tweets were offensive or embarrassing, the potential for bad Twitter PR was outstanding.
By launching Murdoch’s personal Twitter handle, News Corp. was clearly thinking of using Twitter for business, using the handle to promote the business. However, the worst part of this hoax was that no one looked into the legitimacy of this account from the company. The timing was perfect for the fake Deng account to go up. The couple were on vacation during this time, and were unreachable until their return. And since the two handles went up so close to one another, News Corp. assumed that Deng’s was simply unplanned. Once the blue verification check went up, that was the end of the matter.
News Corp. learned a valuable lesson about the potential damage that can happen from poorly controlled Twitter PR. When using Twitter for business, remember that accounts may very often be spam or someone pretending to be someone else, and you can avoid a Twitter scandel yourself.
So, do you think you would like to learn more about how to use Twitter for business? Do you think you would like to find out more about Twitter PR? Check us out at fishbat.com to learn more!
Tags: advertising, article marketing, Internet marketing, marketing with twitter, networking, online business, online promotion, press releases, public relations, social media marketing, twitter for business, Twitter Marketing, twitter pr, web marketing
