Zen and the Art of Social Media

It’s hard to imagine going to a marketing conference and running into the social media person for Al-Shabab, but now it seems that just might happen.

That’s right. Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen, the Somalian group designated as a terrorist organization and most recently in the papers for banning aid workers from an already struggling Somalia, is now on Twitter.

Obviously you’re already scanning for the link, so here it is.

I’ve already spoken in favor of companies bolstering transparency by moving their customer service to the social media sphere, but there’s a danger there for the consumer; just because you’re tweeting openly doesn’t mean you’re tweeting honestly.

It’s less scary when your airline clouds the truth than it is when an allegedly brutal political organization does it, but the fact remains: there’s a certain trust that exists within social media channels that can be easily manipulated. Perhaps it’s my own bias, but I trust a brand I can have a conversation with a lot more than one that doesn’t acknowledge the humanity behind it.

Now, obviously Twitter has been a breeding ground for political rhetoric for quite some time now, and it’s not for me to say that Obama deserves a Twitter and Al-Shabab does not. In their own, though visibly biased, words, “If #US has a virtual embassy in #Tehran, why can’t HSM maintain a virtual presence to impart the reality of Somali warfare?”

Still, groups like Al-Shabab taking to Twitter does worry me (insert comment about western bias here). It worries me because social media holds a similar power to music. Like music, social media is both public and meaningful (in that it conveys a message). It’s emotional and communicative. It allows people from very different backgrounds to connect. It makes us feel like we’re part of something and because of that holds an incredible power to influence our decisions.

If you’re not sure why that’s a bad thing, you might have forgotten about Simon Bikindi, the Rwandan singer whose music and lyrics incited people to join the Interahamwe, who then slaughtered almost one million people during the genocide.

It’s important to remember that behind every Twitter account is an agenda, and that we mustn’t take tweets or posts at face value.

For small businesses, this is why social media must necessarily be founded upon a strong PR campaign [Edit: A friend on Twitter pointed out that it’s not a good PR campaign that matters, but real public relations]. Your tweets tell only part of the story. It doesn’t matter if you’re tweeting about caramel macchiatos when the first twenty news articles on google are about you cutting off peoples’ hands and killing aid workers.

Maybe you can fool people into thinking you’re something you’re not through your Twitter account, but let’s hope, as good global citizens, that this isn’t the case.