UberNoggin

Back in fourth grade I had a huge crush on a blond boy named Joshua. I didn’t really know him but he looked cool and he made jokes in the hallway. You know how love goes when you’re nine years old. Anyhow, I really wanted Josh to be my boyfriend (whatever that meant) but he didn’t seem to notice me. He did, however, notice my friend Jennifer who was bubbly, cute, funny, and had a much better plastic charm belt than I did. So I came up with a brilliant plan. I’d have Jennifer ask Josh if he’d go roller skating with me on Saturday. I’m sure you can imagine what happened next. There I stood biting my nails as Jennifer walked up to him, then they both turned and looked at me. He smirked, whispered to her, and well, they wound up going rollerskating without me on Saturday. My plan was flawed from the beginning. I can see that now. But back then it seemed brilliant. Jennifer was better with boys so why not allow each of us to play our strengths? The bottom line was that Jennifer wasn’t good at being me.

This morning I found this company. Cherp claims to be able to help companies develop strategies to better use Twitter for marketing and corporate communication. It’s not a bad idea. Social media moves so fast that most big organizations simply can’t keep up with all of it. It makes sense to have a partner who understands the media as well as you understand your business. It’s similar to hiring a cultural expert who can be sure that your company’s message gets translated correctly for a foreign country’s culture. An expert who coaches you before a meeting to be sure you understand social mores and traditions.

But they don’t pretend to be you in the meeting. You can’t hire a company to pretend to be you at the social media party.

I’m sure Cherp wouldn’t advocate it either, but hiring someone else to Twitter/blog/podcast for you is as bad as me asking Jennifer to ask Josh to go out with me. I would have been much better off if I’d asked her to help me work up the courage to talk to him myself. You just can’t hire someone to be you. But you can hire someone to help you speak the language, fit into the culture.

Oh, and Josh? Well, he turned out to be quite the loser by sixth grade anyhow. Ah well.

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