A Growth Market for Writers: Celebrity GhostTweeter

Well, the NY Times beat me to it.  Sort of.

I’ve been meaning to write something on the consequences of celebrity tweeting for writers for weeks now.   I think there’s a whole new career path here.

It’s clear that while Tweeting adds considerable value to a celebrity’s profile, it’s also something he or she can get seriously wrong.

Intoxicated by the chance to share every moment of an unquestionably fascinating life (they’re a celebrity after all) said famous person can pretty swiftly reveal him or herself to be whiny, egotistical, entitled,crazy or — worst of all — utterly ordinary.

It’s what you could call rule one of celebrity tweeting: done wrong, celebrity tweeting destroys your brand.

Of course, a few rare folks can pull it off.  There’s Stephen Fry and The Real Shaq, whom Noam Coen mentions in the Times, both of who seem to have personalities perfectly suited to the form.  But for most famous people, being interesting many times a day is just plain hard.

Subscribe to a few celebrity feeds and it’s obvious that a lot of people are needing help.  And of those who have it, many clearly aren’t getting the help they need.  Have the wrong people write your tweets  and you quickly betray your twittering as phony PR.  What good is that?

The situation, it’s seemed to me for a while, calls for a new profession — the GhostTweeter.   And here’s the Times recognizing the same thing.

Coen is interested mostly in the fact of GhostTweeting.  I’m as curious about the mechanics.  What exactly is the job description for a celebrity GhostTweeter?

Here’s a try:

Writer needed to work with internationally known personality.  You’ll be:

• psychologically acute, able to understand what motivates both the famous individual and his/her many tens of thousands of diehard fans.
• a natural storyteller, able to take the facts of your employer’s day — whatever they are — and spin them into narrative gold, but always in the believable ‘voice’ of your employer.
• a high-performance, high-producing copywriter, able to translate that understanding into 10 or more engaging, entertaining and above all punchy 140 character tweets per day.  (You will also be expected to reply to at least 20 tweets sent to you be fans per day, to be written in the same engaging ‘voice’).
• available all hours, ready to be tweet for your celebrity wherever he/she is in the world (no, you will not be traveling with the celebrity.  You can do this from home).

Experience in brand management and creative writing is very much a plus.  Ability to work in a high pressure environment with emotional, ambitious people used to ‘high-touch’ assistance is essential.

How does sound?

My guess is this will be a rare growth industry for writers in the next few years.

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