Why You Won’t See any Dirt from Me Here

I tweet as @ladysportsman and I have this blog. Both are mine. I bought the blog domain name and for the most part, write my blogs on my own time. My twitter account is me, as well, and is a pseudo-representative of the company. I tweet some personal stuff (observations mainly) because I think people want to see a little personal mixed in with business. But the majority of my tweets are from business travel and doing business as Sportsman Channel. Sportsman has their own Twitter handle, @SportsmanChnl and they tweet about shows coming up, air times and my press releases. People have asked me if @Ladysportsman is the official handle for Sportsman Channel and I have to tell them, “No, it’s just me doing my thing.”

I don’t kid myself – I’m still representing Sportsman Channel on all this social media stuff. And as a PR person, perhaps I “get” that better than most people would in this position.

I’ve been berating myself lately.  Especially with this blog. I know what people WANT to see on this blog – behind the scenes, dirt, the goods, on Sportsman Channel. I try to offer little peeks inside our world, but I’ve found it’s REALLY difficult to write about something and keep it on the up and up. As in, I-hope- my-boss-is-cool-with-this-even-though-it’s-my-personal-blog. (I’m still not sure my boss(es) even read my posts. I think it’s still my mom, my sister and my one friend.)

"X" marks the dirt spot. Dish here! Photo credit: tsakshaug

So after reading this article about an agency getting fired over a Tweet, and then this article about the f-bomb imploding on a Chrysler Twitter account, I don’t feel so bad.

For one thing, the f-bomb thing was stupid. The account rep said they thought they were still logged in on their Twitter account. I would never swear on my personal Twitter account, even if I had it pre-employment. Perhaps that’s just me. But people find you – they find out who you work for (perhaps you have it listed on your Twitter bio even?) and now, tah-dah, you are a representative of your company on social media.

Some people just don’t get that. They think it is separate and that the two may never meet. WRONG

The “Golden Rule” of Twitter is to tweet how you want to be tweeted. So even the first story I mentioned above where the agency fired off an unthoughtful tweet breaks that rule. They apologized over and over again and deleted the tweet, but come on, we all know how this story ends in the age of social media. Someone already screen-grabbed that tweet and the agency lost the account.

This reminds me of another Twitter story where an agency account rep landed in a southern town to meet with a client and tweeted an insult about the town. They lost the account, too. You would think it was small-town USA and the agency was a small-time, two-person office. Um, no. It was Ketchum and the town was Memphis.

That story was in 2009 and I still recall it as “number one thing not to ever do on twitter.”

So that’s why you won’t see any dirt from me on this blog…or on Twitter and I only friend those I trust on Facebook.  I won’t dish about the network in any way, shape or form other than a purely educational format (or humor, I try and do humor like The Hunter’s Wife, but don’t pull it off as well as Jody.)

I hope to still provide an insight about what its like to work for a national cable network dedicated to the outdoors because well, how many people have my job? Probably two.