Photo credit: ariadna
Every tweet sent by Southwest Airlines is written by Christi McNeill, but she is explicit that her personal tweets are not representative of her employer.
How truthful is she?
How truthful are others?
Marc Meyer, Ken Burbary, Julia Roy, Eric Andersen, Lisa Brown, Steve Lunceford, Amber Naslund, Shannon Paul, Ike Pigott, and Gradon Tripp are but a handful of thousands, if not millions, of other people who also work for other employers and who also have personal Twitter accounts that specify their tweets are not representative of their bosses.
Either they are asked by management to disclose such, or they take initiative to disclose it themselves.
The irony is such a disclosure is merely perceived as a conflict.
There is no conflict.
The moment Christi tells the world she works for Southwest (which is explicit in both her bio and in SouthwestAir’s bio), it is moot to read that her tweets are her own.
Morgan Johnston, her equal at JetBlue Airways, takes the opposite approach. His personal account is specific that his tweets are his own.
Is Morgan misleading you?
If he is lacking that disclosure then so are Nicholas Porter, Connie Bensen, Jeremiah Owyang, Gini Dietrich, Chris Brogan, Peter Kim, Sir Roger Moore, Katie Couric, and countless others.
When you see Katie’s tweets, do you wonder if she is representing her own thoughts or those of CBS? Does it even matter who is behind each tweet when you know her employer?
Peter Kim opines why Christi and her ilk use the wrong words:
If a person uses their corporate affiliation to build credibility, further association of published content with brand is impossible to ignore… An employee doesn’t need to be discussing internal operations or other official business to create external impressions of the brand. Once the connection has been established, it persists.
Do people not follow Christi because she works for Southwest?
Perception is reality. It’s moot to indicate your tweets are not your own. Of course they are, and of course you will continue to represent your employer regardless what your bio says.
Thanks, Peter, for sparking this review.
