Is there really such a thing? Oh Yes there is and It's growing. I wrote about this last year (More and More Twitter Ghost Tweeters) I just did a search for Ghost Tweeting Jobs within the last month and came up with 97thousand yes thousand posts. It is of such relevance that the SES show (social medias version of comicon) had an entire seminar dedicated to it last December. The discussed the ethics and logistics of it and of course there was no definitive answer other than if you are going to have a ghost tweeter - do not pretend that it's only you. Don't have 5 people tweeting for you all hours of the day and night as if it was only one person. Back when all this started I could not understand how Guy Kawaski could possible run his empire and be tweeting so darn much. The truth was revealed finally and he did take somewhat of a hit. In fact I just did a search for Guy on twitter and it said he could not be found. That is going to be another article - The search for Guy's tweet.
Since it's obvious so many people have them. Celebrities can not spend all their time tweeting. Did you see Kirstie Alley's Twittervention??? That was a funny episode. Laughed my butt off. Corporations need to have a twitter presence but is their agency doing the tweeting or some intern or some marketing person or the actual CEO. Undoubtedly someone is getting paid to tweet on their behalf. Small companies with no time to tweet or no understanding of Twitter also hire people to set up and maintain their Social Media presence. Usually they start out with some teenage family member doing it and then when results begin to pour in they actually pay someone.
So how do you go about getting a job as a ghost tweeter?
I got my first ghost tweeting job off of my content management position for several websites. I built up a name for myself and word got around I could take on more clients and bam… I was ghost tweeting. I did it through example. I had a lot of social media clout and I leveraged it to get more positions. Bad News is this is something that takes CONSTANT production. You can NOT take a day, a week, a month and certainly not a year off of and expect to get right back into it. You must build your social media collateral and not just Twitter, you need to be on top of all the social media outlets and you need to make sure you are one of the first to pick up on the next big thing, which means you must be ontop of every single one because we never know what's going to be the next big thing. People hated twitter at first and thought it was stupid and facebook was once only for college kids.
Secondly, you must have marketing experience, knowledge and wit.
and then of course you must network yourself. Put the word out (privately) that you are available for such jobs - DO NOT post on your twitter page that you are available for Ghost Tweeting - the whole idea is GHOST - secret, behind the scenes, not immediately apparent. If you find someone whom you would like manage their social media content, send them an email, put Social Media Manager on your resume and discreetly send to your target.
Twitter is just one piece of the social media pie, most likely ghost tweeting would be part of your social media manager job duties. I say get a marketing degree, get some real street experience, grow your own professional social media network and tweet away.
