My guess is that PR firms will do the same.

In all honesty, he brings a lot of traffic into this site on Twitter. I’ll probably have to just start every post with “by Jonathan Trenn”.

yet I also understand how, when communicating in a space that does not allow for vocal inflection or body language, that the words we use can convey things about us that aren’t necessarily true.

So, in a sense, I wanted to get to some truth about you–and I thank you for that.

Jonathan and I have crossed paths before as well–and I think he and I have always been in agreement about character blogs and fake personnas.

Eventually, many of the “blogs” that are ghost-written will probably vanish, and many of the companies playing around with social media because they are feeling the need to do so–without fully understanding it–will either leave the space or re-think their social media plans. At that point, they might begin to bring in folks who can help them gain a better understanding of it rather than grasping for whatever immediate–and perhaps reputation-damaging–strategy presented itself in their particular pinch.

Let’s face it: most people who get social media have been around it for awhile. Even then, mistakes are made.

Where all of this will go, though, only time will tell.

Hell, I should just call this, “Marketing Conversation with Jonathan Trenn” — the reason why people get confused is because I ping Twitter on my account the moment anything is posted. We need to work on a new and better solution.

I have been friends to people of all ages forever. I have friends from 20s-70s and don’t discern. Ever. I cut my teeth on the Well, The Meta Network, and Brainstorms as well as USENET, MOOs and MUDs. Nobody knows how old someone is who they are physically, but you do get to learn their hearts.

When it comes to hiring someone, I can only hire people I know and people who I can find. I think the biggest problem with being able to place true people in blogging positions instead of using people like the above-mentioned persona-blogger is because you can’t always find them.

Where are they? People look for services and they look for solutions. They also want something that is affordable and simple and so going to a blogger service for blogging services is the way people go.

Also, my fave blogger is Jonathan Trenn. For this sort of space, Jonathan is Jonathan and he’s not pretending to be anyone else.

I thing people generally don’t know that they might be able to hire their favorite client or customer as a corporate blogger. They also think they need their CEO to blog and that CEO doesn’t want to blog, so the blog gets ghost-written by either a consultant by someone on the staff.

People are just looking for solutions. I know for a fact that the “pretty, young” woman who I met, the persona blogger, loves blogging for a Yoga studio the most because Yoga is her passion. But, she can’t be a Yoga blogger enough just now to support a life in NYC.

What she plans to do, at the end of the day, is expand her business so that she can broker lots and lots of topically-passionate bloggers to the blogs that need them.

Right now, she needs to wear all the hats, but I think down the road, she can specialise, diversify; also, she is unwilling to take on gigs that she can’t make fly — she doesn’t want to do autoblogs or highly-technical blogs for topics, products, and services she can’t get into.

She also told me that she really gets into her personas and goes up and over the number of hours she bills in the course of a week to keep on top of the conversation.

At the end of the day, what is more important: personalized service and support and a willing ear — an amazing experience but with a Stage Name, or either a brochure-ware site or a dead-in-the-water semi-abandoned blog with the comments turned off?

Even our pretty young persona blogger is going to be replaced more and more by offshored virtual assistants and staffing. We have explored that ourselves for other reasons and have found that there is a lack of America-specific enculturation, but that will be less and less obvious the more and more these virtual assistants work on their western cultural personas.

And, yes: of course there are gorgeous and brilliant middle-aged women — especially in social media and PR. I would name names but they would kill me! And since I have been attending Renaissance Weekend since 2001, I can assure you that there are gorgeous, brilliant, sexy, powerful, and self-realized women who are well into their 80s, and you can quote me on that!

In terms of my sexism and ageism, I am neither sexist nor ageist; however, I did use sexist and ageist language and I appologise for that, that’s for sure, Tish.

I wasn’t in the audience that Chris Kieff and Chris Abraham were in so I’m not privy to her blog or the way she positioned it. I have nothing against “character blogs” as long as they’re blatantly obvious.

I do see a lot of harm in someone creating a fake persona. Readers rely on a persona insight and knowledge base.

I’m glad to see I got a conversation going here. This is a concept I’m going to push. Michael Arrington and Jeremy Pepper have two insightful articles out there on how PR is broken. I think, given the nature of social media, it could get worse for both advertising and PR as mainstream marketing companies enter the arena.

To Stevie: I disagree with your contention that the reference to the Clinton scandal is somewhat separate from the greater point. And I put it this post to get reactions like yours. The overall point was that we all – and especially impressionable young people have witness a lot of ethical violations of some sort from public figures (and I don’t care if it’s “private behavior – they still play larger roles in society than making policy) to religious institutions to major corporations that employ a lot of people and can affect markets. That stuff leads to the desensitizing and cynicism that we see. How then do we expect people entering the industry to follow guidelines?

So, yep, all of this stuff adds up.

And eventually, savvy folks will figure out the false-face. There are syntax cues out there that differentiate 50 year old experience/speech from 20 something speech. Also, it is often easy to tell a stock photo from a real photo. And nobody believes the “face” of an avatar.

Also, Chris, you keep mentioning the “pretty, young” aspect. Do you realize that your comments are a bit agest as well as sexist? can’t there be “pretty” women in middle age who are just as qualified? Or is it more that “pretty” and “young” imply a certain amount of not questioning of authority figures and thus following the marketing firm’s “mission”?