When a company does not reveal who writes for a brand in social media, I think companies are attempting to balance what works best in using social media to communicate and managing limited resources.

Many people who contributed to the agency transparency post yesterday were okay for agency staff to post on behalf of a brand, but not okay for agency staff to represent they are posting on behalf of an individual. Though even here there was a nuance, some people were okay with ghost writing, if it only meant editing or rewriting.

I'm reminded of Dr. Walter Carl's use of the term synthetic transparency, in a post describing the meaning of the term synthetic transparency, the definition is from Dr. Walter Carl formerly of Northeastern University, now CEO of ChatThreads, “Synthetic transparency involves using blogs to give the impression of openness, honesty, and transparency but without really doing so.”

Merely using a social media website as a publishing tool loses half the opportunity a company can gain from a social media website. Social media tools can be used to build relationships with people, and relationships are built between individuals. Company employees represent the company brand, but by connecting with people on a personal level a company is much more likely to gain benefits and make a bigger commitment to customers. It's a lot easier to hide from a customer if they don't know your name, but if you have an online reputation to maintain, employees are going to be much more committed to making sure they meet expectations and promises given.

To avoid synthetic transparency in social media, all a company has to do is reveal what is happening. Simply set expectations about how you are using social media, especially if what you are doing is outside of reasonable expectations for a social media technology.
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