Twitter is one of the new wonders of the modern world, acting as a social site where family, friends, colleagues and also celebrities can follow each other on. In the corporate environment it is great to interact with your possible and existing clients.
Coming with the modern world though you will always find someone who finds a loophole and gets away with fraud, in Twitter’s case – Spam…
What is the difference between Marketing and Spamming?
Let’s first take a look at the definition of both
“Marketing is the process by which companies create customer interest in goods or services. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business development.It is an integrated process through which companies build strong customer relationships and create value for their customers and for themselves”
“Spam is the use of electronic messaging systems (including most broadcast media, digital delivery systems) to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately. While the most widely recognized form of spam is e-mail spam, the term is applied to similar abuses in other media: instant messaging spam, Usenet newsgroup spam, Web search engine spam, spam in blogs, wiki spamming, online classifieds spam, cellular messaging spam, forum spamming, junk faxes, social networking spam, television advertising and file sharing network spam.” – “Extracted from Wikipedia”
Marketing is based on relevance of information – if the person you send it to is in actual fact interested or not. In simple terms, if the person is interested, it is marketing – if the person is not and keeps on receiving material from you, it is spam.
Another difference of spamming is when the marketing material is sent out and not followed up. Where with marketing, a relationship is built up by phone calls, smsses and follow ups between you and the client.
When it comes to Twitter, you can see the difference between marketing and spamming by simply looking on the brand/company’s page. If it is a honest marketer you will see the ads are sent only to an audience related to the brand’s product. You will also see two way communication, it will have replies and counter replies where a spammer will only have the material sent on a regular basis. They do not expect replies where marketers try to grow the relationship.
Another way of seeing the difference is that marketers send in moderation, I would say once a month. They can further keep their site updated and it will be up to you whether you would like to view the updates. Spammers will bombard you with junk mail daily, sometimes up to 5 times a day (I have won the UK lotto many a time)
The point is that Twitter is a free for all social site and like everything in this world, has to be used and not misused as is unfortunately all too often the case. A tip for your business being marketed on Twitter – market on Twitter in moderation and you will reap the benefits of a fruitful outcome.
