Sabrina Dent: Freelance web designer, developer and internet marketer living in Cork, Ireland with one dog and a husband in no particular order.
Everything You Need to Know About Social Media in Four Tweets
Exhibit A:
Exhibit B:
I sincerely think that is everything you need to know about social media in four tweets.
Alternatively, you could just watch @shutterstock shill on Twitter for an object lesson in what not to do.
(I did try to illuminate the path for them, just because it pains me so to watch these companies vomit all over their expensive branded shoes. Not surprisingly, the PR muffin or graduate intern or highly paid Social Media Expert™ or whoever they have working that account totally did not get it.)
28 Aug 2009
| In: Crankypants + Marketing + Social Networks | Tags:FAIL, shutterstock, super glue, twitter
But I don’t get it.
Social media enthusiasts encourage corporations to engage with their customers. And when it happens they get shot down?
Twitter’s a phenomenon, and companies are charted to make money. The inevitable combination of the two will never be pretty.
And does the word ‘social’ somehow provide a shield from the evils of product promotion? Only as much as you don’t see advertising in pubs.
30.08.2009, 4:16 amI don’t mind interacting with companies on Twitter – I follow several, including a few I’ve helped get on there. The point is threefold:
1/ These are companies I CHOOSE TO FOLLOW. I did not choose to interact with @shutterstock.
2/ The companies I interact with do not view Twitter as a SALES CHANNEL. Look at @shutterstock’s stream – 90% of their tweets are just spamming people with the same sales message over and over.
3/ @shutterstock is transparently looking for Twitter mentions of iStock and other competitors and shilling their own services. That is gross and in no way conversational.
It’s not surprising that companies don’t know how to use Twitter when the agencies that advise them don’t understand the medium.
31.08.2009, 10:37 pmAll the Seo and PPC agencies became Social Media experts all of a sudden when their clients started asking about it.
Right, but
1) I don’t elect to read a company’s billboard advertising before I drive past it
2) Presumably a lot companies can’t justify doing much else than fulfilling their capitalist charter ;-)
3) I suspect that’s life.
The days when one could think of Twitter as a private dinner party (where guests even talking about business would be dreadful etiquette) seem long gone.
Now it’s more like a stadium football match: a heaving mass of anonymous humanity. and open season for corporate advertising. However crude, fumbled, or ‘unconversational’ it might seem, the rules of the dinner party sadly no longer apply.
01.09.2009, 4:16 amJames,
17.09.2009, 5:32 pmHi. I’m spurred to chip in because I use Twitter. I hate it when anyone sends me unsolicited advertising.
I suppose I don’t simply mean “unasked for”: it matters whether the tweet shows any appreciation of my interests. There is an inevitable risk that Twitter might be swamped by businesses flogging their stuff randomly and irritatingly.