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| Photo Credit: blogs.knoxnews.com |
How far would you go to increase
your company's media buzz? Some public relations professionals are considering
risky social media strategies to gain notice.
The “Tweet and Delete” strategy
entails posting a tweet, which may or may not be controversial, and deleting it
soon after. The intention is to spark a conversation about this deleted tweet
or the organization due to the suspicious reasoning behind the delete.
Online databases like The
Sunshine Foundation catalog deleted tweets by politicians and celebrities.
These tweets often catch the eye of the media and are then used to create buzz
in the public sphere. But should public relations
professionals employ this gambit in their media strategies? It’s a dangerous
game to play when fooling the media and the public whose relationship and
credibility most businesses depend on for its success.
The very foundation of this
strategy is to fool online readers, which fails the PRSSA code of ethics’
standards in more than one category.
Public relations professionals are called to advocate, be honest and
remain loyal to their key publics.
“Yes, PR pros using this
technique might successfully fool the media and the public with a “tweet and
delete” strategy,” Brad Phillips said in the PRDaily.com article Tweet it and delete it—a smart, new PR
gambit? “But it could come at the cost of their media relationships and
their public credibility.“
Although “Tweet and Delete” may seem to be the easy way to gain
more media exposure in this era of
information overload, public relations professionals should be wary of the
consequences this risky gambit can produce.
