Being an incendiary, I’m used to getting unfollowed, ignored and even blocked (yes @mark_to_market blocked me, Lord knows who else, I stopped caring at 2000) and I’m definitely used to seeing the rats scatter across my stats every time I mention [insert firm or company name here] so it’s obvious to me from my various online interactions that some communications departments are keeping an eye on the conversation.
Since we’re all interested in the accounting side of things, I have to say that I notice more “official-looking” Twitter activity from firms based outside of the US (generally Big 4 coming from the UK or Canada) that leads me to believe most of them are at least keeping an eye on the Google alerts. PwC had the large pair to follow me once, very early on, and probably unfollowed when I started ripping on them for bumbling Satyam. Anyway, someone has to watch what’s being said and a company (or organization) can only choose to engage or not engage.
Engaging, of course, comes in several forms but to vaguely pin down what “engage” means, I’d define it as any activity that alerts others they are listening and/or give a shit.
For Comcast, they swarm Twitter responding to complaints about their crappy service, extortion boxes, and complicated remotes. Not all companies choose to take that route, nor should they be expected to. Protecting or guarding your brand means figuring out how much “engaging” is appropriate as any more or less than is appropriate for your particular organization’s needs will come off as fake, lame or just forced. And no one wants to interact with that.
For Dave and Buster’s, I give them credit for totally engaging me by following me. I’ve been publicly ripping on them for at least a week but I’m not doing it just to be mean, I’d really really like to know what went down with E&Y (welcome to your new gig, KPMG). I’ve never actually been in a D&B and any inquisitive tweets on my part were not returned but so far they haven’t sued me so I guess I’m doing well on that front.
Some agencies choose to completely ignore some of the more “questionable” interaction that isn’t exactly a pissed off customer. They’re already trained to handle that (any social media idiot can teach you how to talk to customers who talk about you in a list of 3 items or more) but they aren’t likely prepared for a fake accounting firm to ask them if newly-single D&B would want to try them out as auditors.
I don’t expect Dave & Buster’s to answer or acknowledge that but following me shows that they are at least aware I’m trying to egg them on and aren’t afraid of my bitch ass. Unlike the fake accounting firm, I’m a voice out there spreading whatever I know about [insert company] to a huge audience. They can’t send me 10,000 free tickets to shut my trap and I’m not exactly making a complaint they can resolve so what can they do? Keep an eye on me?
I admire that tactic. And may leave them alone… I’m more likely to do so if I get a tweet about what happened with E&Y but won’t be holding my breath for that particular @.
What a joke, showing how out of touch the leaders of our profession are. If the profession wants improve recruitment and stop the bleeding of experienced CPA’s, then it needs to, excuse me, grow a set and stand up for the profession. We are under regulatory assault, with lawyers and bureaucrats, with no accounting background, attacking us day after day. Onerous rules continue to be promulgated, and CPA’s have their profession careers upended on a weekly basis- with no end in site. Where are our leaders? We need to clean house at the AICPA and our State Societies, and get rid of the people diluting our profession by admitting everyone short of grave diggers, and replace them with people focused on fighting for the CPA profession.
Maybe firms need to pay more as well…..
Well said!
Agreed 10000 billion percent with what Robert just wrote. Bureaucrats and Lawyers have taken over the accounting profession and are pushing their own agendas. AICPA is just a facade for the BIG 4 oligopoly and their master plan for world domination. Sole practitioners are being driven out of business and forced out of the profession altogether. Vast amounts of audit work are now being offshore outsourced to countries like India or turned over to ChatGPT. Sad but I fear nothing will change until there is another Enron or Worldcom or Arthur Anderson type of massive accounting failure.
I think we need to be guarded with our criticism against descending into useless snark. There are plenty of things to criticize the AICPA and their Big 4 compadres about, I don’t think this is one of them. I’ll confess though this looks a bit unserious to me, 50 something CPAs are not the target – high school kids are. They have to try something, this at least will do no harm.