“What you just tweeted is unacceptable, it is a direct attack against me and the company”
If this sounds familiar to you, you might enjoy what I am going to babble about.
I’ve been hearing a lot of complaints lately about CEOs/Managers nagging their employees what to tweet and what not to tweet knowing that the tweeps are not associating their handles with the company directly.
I can understand (at least try to) why some executives and business owners do not like the fact that their employees are using Twitter, BUT, I am pretty sure that most of you will agree that Twitter activities should be encouraged and there’s no reason why one should worry or “hate” a whole medium.
I am gonna take some wild guesses to why some don’t like social media and Twitter in particular and feel free to share your own views the comment sections.
- No control whatsoever: I think this is the number one reason why they “hate” Twitter. Why you ask? Well I strongly believe that they get worried about having their “hidden skeletons” in public. Companies do face the case of an employee gone rogue and can contain the situation, but when the company is dysfunctional and has a well known record of mistreating its employees, lack of control over what the employees tweet is their main concern (Mass resignations and people “tweeting” about it?)
- Head Hunting: Yip! Executives are afraid of competition head hunting their best “assets and resources” (referring here to human beings…) Again, you rarely see someone moving from one company to another just like that or just because that person “felt like it”. It all comes down to a better salary, better position, better benefits, better environment…
- Fear of the unknown: People are afraid of the unknown and they cannot tame their fear if they really don’t know something.
- Transparency (lack of): Some companies do not put their money where their mouth’s at. Executives fear that being public. How many times you were sucked in some sugar coated speech only to find out after a bit of time that this is NOT what the “salesman” told you.
- Direct criticism: We saw a live example at Arabnet 2010 when people where just “telling it like it is” in few panels (e-commerce panel had the highest negative tweets) Some concerned parties did not like them and tried to mask by counter tweeting some meaningless supportive tweets and missing the whole point without taking these criticisms positively and correcting what went wrong. (A perfect example is what the good folks at Arabnet did, they took all the comments that were tweeted in 2010 and fixed what people thought should be fixed and came up with a better conference in 2011)
I had to get this off my chest, and some great folks over Twitter shared their thoughts, I am picking 3 out of the whole bunch! (Thank you all of you for your replies! I should turn this into a scientific survey!)
@Fadisabbagha: I love Twitter because I see in it a fun, fast, interesting and relevant personal and professional update tool and channel.
@Chemali. : I usually hold them accountable for results.So no prob. Of course they gotta dissociate their own opinions from the company image(like I do)
@Skaramist: (in reply if she encourages her employees/staff to go on twitter) yes :) To data mine, market our deals & keep an eye on the competition
Three different examples why executives SHOULD love Twitter. What do you think? Twitter yey or ney?
