When you follow your favorite movie stars and rock stars on the social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, I bet you they have you believe it’s really them, don’t you?  I mean, who’s to really know it’s not them?  They’re right on topic and are saying things you’d expect from them, right?

I have Paula Deen on virtual book tour right now, but being as I’m just a pawn in the whole scheme of things, Paula Deen is not who I am in contact with, but instead, her publisher.  That’s no big surprise and I just felt fortunate to have her on tour no matter how we did it.

But I always wondered what would happen if I could just get some kind of response from her and the first thing I thought of was that old standby where you can talk to any of your favorite stars  – FACEBOOK.

So I knew Paula was on Facebook as I’m following her but now I’m really paying attention to what is being posted.  It appears to have the same southern type of talk but there is definitely something missing that I can’t quite put my finger on.  Maybe the lightbulb moment came after I left a comment swimming around the other hundreds of comments and she never got back to me or what, but I had my suspicions she might not be the one doing all the posting.  I mean, how would you have time to be Paula if you spent all day in Facebook (and you’d be amazed how many people do spend all their day in Facebook).

I watched Paula Deen in concert last July and about the time she was supposed to be on the plane going to her destination, a message was posted on her Facebook page which made me think that either she had a laptop on the plane and after her exhausting concert, she still had energy to play in Facebook or someone else was posting for her.

I’m not saying it’s not Paula, I’m just sayin’.  But think about it.  What if you just don’t have time to keep up with all the twitter chatter or all your  facebook fans if all of them are messaging you daily?  I’m talking hundreds of messages a day or more, not just one or two like some of us are getting – ahem.

So this leads me to a video I just watched about ghost-tweeting.  In my own little fantasy world, I like to think it’s the celebrity posting things and I have the ability to post right back and they see that, but who are we kidding but ourselves.  This video explains it all:

So people hire people to ghost-tweet for them which frees up their time to do what they are doing to keep their business out there on all the social networks which experts are claiming is the place to be (I attest to that).

I just think there’s something not real kosher about it and it leads me to another facet of the crazy world of the Internet – hiding behind a persona – or even a ghost-tweeter – and leading people to believe it’s you.

Kinda makes you want to start over again with that Santa Claus and Easter Bunny thing, doesn’t it?

Related posts:

1. Sherry Shumard’s virtual book tour spotlighted in Danville, Illinois’ The Commercial-News
2. Effective book marketing using Facebook, news trends and Skype