Brace Yourself for the #AuditorProud Social Media Blitz
Ding. Ding. Are you ready for Round 2? It’s the second annual #AuditorProud day. Hey, wait a second. Wasn’t it in December last year? Actually, yes. At least we know now that the folks over at the Center for Audit Quality took a haphazard approach when selecting the day and it’s totally random. But hey, […]
Which Popular Accounting Hashtag Should You Use? An Explainer
You cannot deny the chaotic beauty of Twitter. There's something oddly soothing watching millions of voices shout into the void with little regard for who will be listening. Hashtags provide some method to the madness, yet each retains its own flavor of ridiculous. In the accounting world, I've noticed 3 hashtags emerge: #auditorproud, #BusySeasonProblems and […]
#BusySeason Has Arrived
It's only January 6, so it's still too early for #busyseasonproblems, but it won't be long. No, it won't be long. Personally, my main concern is that if Twitter goes to 10,000 characters, the details of #busyseasonproblems will become too much to endure and the whole thing will spiral into a loquacious kvetchfest. Basically #busyseasonproblems […]
Don’t Worry Tax People, You Have a Lame Hashtag, Too
Last Thursday, all sorts of auditors who don't know what hashtags are bumrushed social media to tell #AuditorProud stories. I don't know whether or not #AuditorProud was ever trending on Twitter, but I do know that whatever people were tweeting, it was more worthy of your time than anything Donald Trump managed to share. Now, […]
EXCLUSIVE: Which Big 4 Big Shot Just Stepped Down With the Greatest Farewell Email?
Forgive us for running this before we've had an opportunity to confirm, we're waiting for a call back from our press contact but in the meantime, so many of you have sent this in that we're pretty confident this is anything but a joke. How did this happen?! More important, what just happened?! From: Robert […]
Failed PwC Auditor Finds Success in Burning Bridges With This Ridiculous Farewell Email
In the history of this website, we have posted many farewell emails; the dramatic, the sad, the ridiculously long-winded. Of those, there is just no category for what follows. This person obviously isn’t cut out for the job, but if success in auditing were based solely on the craziness of the email you send your […]
Free Advice for PwC’s Social Media Department
I have some concerns about PwC's social media practices. These concerns go way back, long before they followed and then unfollowed me on Twitter (pfft, I'm used to it) and it appears as though no one on the PwC social media team has had the guts to bring it up so I'm going to go […]
“Doing It Wrong” Twitter Case Study: The Robotic, Over-Hashtagging Accounting Firm
Because I’ve learned the error of my ways and will never call anyone out publicly again on social media les faux pas (I pledge, instead, to use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, mass e-mail and/or BBM to constantly pester the offender into correcting the violation), I figured it would be better instead to just sort of call them out in a manner obvious to everyone but the offender themselves. No need to say specifically who I am talking about, you can probably figure it out.
Auto Direct Messages – One of the most annoying things about constantly using Twitter is being assaulted by auto DMs. What’s extra annoying about this is knowing that people I respect (who – once again – won’t be named) use them to this day. I think the consensus has been that they are impersonal if not disrespectful as you’re not really showing me a commitment to start a relationship by sending me some robot tweet that only clutters my inbox. Knock it off. We’re all very busy. Say something to me if you have to but there’s no need to spam my inbox with your “personalized” welcome message via DM. This is especially bad if you have misspelled something in your really obnoxious auto DM. Stop it. Seriously.
Hashtag Overkill – Somewhat higher on the annoyance scale, constantly hashtagging everything you write in a completely unpredictable, manic pattern. I’m not sure why #compliance is something people are actually searching for on Twitter often enough to require hashtagging it with every mention but to each his own. I’m talking about constantly and excessively hashtagging everything. We know you’re all about diversity and Accounting’s Top Whatever awards but by hashtagging every other word you are merely showing us that you really don’t know how to use Twitter. We expect better out of global accounting firms. I shouldn’t have to name names, you know who you are and you can stop now. Conservatism states that you will knock it the hell off and pick one or two per tweet moving forward.
One Handle Too Many – Is it necessary to create 40 sub-accounts that cover each of your divisions, specialties, scams and locales? I get that firms are global and that’s the whole point of the Internet but once again you’re taking it way too far and getting too excited about this stuff. One smaller accounting firm tweeting consistently, correctly and with a joke here and there is far more effective in my view than 67 sub-accounts randomly over-hashtagging for different global firm specialties. I’ll name names this time, @mgocpa is a great example of doing it right without an entire staff of media people running the show. Come on Big 87654, you guys can afford to put a few more bucks in Internet marketing if you are going to do it. Read one of those “How to Tweet” e-books maybe.
We sincerely hope our suggestions are appreciated here. If they aren’t implemented, we may be forced to start calling people out again.