Stood behind a man who works for Chase at the airport giving someone new marketing copy: “America: we love to work. Chase: we make jobs”

It concerns me that Twitter corporations are finding a new trend to latch onto in order to promote themselves. This trend concerns me because it’s a very ‘spam’ based method. Here are some paraphrased examples:

Retweet / RT this to get entered to win a free pair of tickets to any movie theater!

and

If I get up to 50,000 followers this week, I’ll post a behind-the-scenes clip! Retweet / RT this!

My concern is that the individuals following a brand’s Twitter are likely pretty enthusiastic (including our hypothetical friend, John). To offer John something for free is awesome, and something that John  would consider highly valuable. He is a mega-fan, after all, so things like this really make him giddy, and to be able to grasp at this elusive item merely by retweeting a post seems like a no-brainer!

However, the followers of John aren’t likely mega-fans (including our hypothetical friend Linda). Linda might like the same brand, but she’s not in love with it. This particular brand is just a brand, not something she feels is life-changing. When she looks at her twitter, noticing RT’d posts from her friend, she might find it annoying. Further, if Linda follows a few of the same brand’s mega-fan, than she’ll be receiving the same RT from several individuals (spamming up her twitter feed over and over).

What is further frustrating to Linda, is that the posts she’s getting RT’d at her from John aren’t valuable. They don’t contain great content, or a link to awesome things… they are merely spam. It’s akin to someone manually calling up all of their friends and going “Mc Donald’s Rules!” and then hanging up. It’s not helpful, it’s not cool, it’s just annoying.

Forcing posts down to Linda’s twitter account (via the mega-fan John RT’ing them) creates a very negative brand experience. She will begin to find John annoying (potentially unfollowing him) because of his empty-content posts; and she will likely also begin to form a negative mental image towards the brand which is requesting it’s mega-fans to RT spam out to her (and others).

In the end, Linda will not only be upset with the brand, but also have negative thoughts of it’s fans. A negative double-wammy that no brand should seek to create.

If a brand wants to reward people who are followers with a contest, have them @reply with a trivia answer. The @reply only will go to the brand, as well as anyone following John and the brand. Hence keeping the fans in the loop, and not forcing needless spam out into their friend network.

If a brand wants to thank fans for reaching 50,000 followers, they should do so once you reach it. Don’t entice current followers to RT your posts, asking for new followers who likely won’t be passionate about that brand. The follower count might go up for a few days, but will fall again shortly afterwords, and the brand’s followers will now be diluted from mostly mega-fans down to mega-fans and a lot of people who could care less.

If brands want to get RT’d, or gain more followers, all they need to do is post valuable content. All the posters put up in the world won’t make a terrible TV show better… the same goes for RT’ing spam posts.

Be awesome, it’s just that easy!