Comments on: Twitter Retweet Contests: Viral Marketing or Social Media Spam?

By: RT dit bericht en maak kans: De irritatie van Retweetmarketing | Frank Snijders

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 08:06:34 +0000

[...] retweetmarkeging in mijn ogen niet begrijpen waarvoor Twitter bedoeld is, wordt gegeven door Allison Gianotto. Zij stelt dat Twitter draait om conversatie en interactie, en wanneer bedrijven op zoek zijn naar [...]

By: Why retweet marketing campaigns are the devil | Alex Hunter

Why retweet marketing campaigns are the devil | Alex Hunter — Wed, 26 May 2010 10:37:37 +0000

[...] think this quote from Snipe.net sums up my feelings nicely: “Encouraging your Twitter followers to spam their friends with [...]

By: gregmelton

gregmelton — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 07:57:10 +0000

Great post, snipe! RT contests are lame. Ideally, the contest should be so awesome that you naturally want to share it with people. I can think of a few on twitter where I actually did this (squarespace, but it was more for the prize then the service). So, I suck.

What do you think about the idea of offering a bonus prize (in addition to an actual prize) for people who promote your contest via twitter/facebook, etc? It removes the retweet as a requirement for winning and also makes the contest less spammy-ish.

We recently launched a contest platform using the above premise which works with Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Google Friend Connect, LinkedIn, Yahoo, Digg, and FriendFeed OAuth. Would love to hear your feedback on it. You can learn more here: http://skril.com.

-greg

By: Shaktipaj

Shaktipaj — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 00:32:35 +0000

Firstly – you are my Wonder Woman, my Storm, my Tank Girl! Yeah, I love your tweets and blog that much!!! One of my resolutions this year is to stop being a dishrag and start saying what I really felt – thanks for leading the way.
I admit to having done this, and mea maxima culpa to all the good people I spammed, cuz that's what it was! Luckily, a good friend who was more Twitter savvy DM'd me and basically said 'hey newbie – you are spamming your stream!' Thank god for great friends! I think we should all be so lucky….

By: snipe

snipe — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 22:37:29 +0000

Yeah, somehow the Shorty Awards don't feel as shitty – probably because (as you mentioned) they're not selling anything. But their very definition, the person you're voting for needs more votes to win. You genuinely support the person, or you wouldn't have nominated or voted for them in the first place, so it feels a little more like a selfless act for a cause that you believe it more than shilling a product or service.

I didn't get thousands of nominations, so it wasn't annoying to *me* – in fact, I thought it was sweet every time a notification showed up in my @replies timeline. I don't know if that would still seem sweet after a few hundred a day though. Even so, I think people are kind of used to that, since anyone popular enough to be nominated that often is already used to having their tweets retweeted hundreds of times a day.

By: snipe

snipe — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 22:32:36 +0000

Heh – it's funny – almost everyone who has commented or talked about this post on Twitter admits that they have fallen for it once, and they are now the ones being most vocal about how much they suck. Whatever marketing rationale these companies are using, any promotional method that nets out with your users feeling like they need a Silkwood shower clearly isn't working.

PS – Don't feel badly. I did it once too, many moons ago.

By: Brian Inman

Brian Inman — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 10:26:29 +0000

The RT contests are totally dumb. I have to agree with you. It reminds me of the stupid emails I get all the time that say forward to 20 friends in 5 minutes to have your wish come true, or the many other spammy emails.

I fell for the RT contest once for a game in my niche. The problem is all my followers were also following the game company. I ended up getting 30 RT's of the same Twitter, and I am sure the same thing happened to them.

The bad part is they wanted you to do it for 12 days. (12 days of Xmas). Every day it was the same exact video they wanted you to retweet. It was definitely the lamest RT contest I ever saw.

By: Rooker

Rooker — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 07:02:09 +0000

Spam. The more successful it is, the more annoying it becomes because you see more and more of it. I was on the verge of mass unfollowing people during the flood of spam with #moonfruit, "I just upgraded Hootsuite" and "I just took the 'How much of a Twitter douchebag am I?' quiz." All the Formspring tweets are starting to get a little annoying too.

You want to know how well those campaigns worked on me? Those companies destroyed their brands in my eyes. They promote themselves by encouraging the worst sort of behavior on the net: spamming. I will never use Moonfruit or Hootsuite or any other company that does that. I don't use my Twitter login on any site that I suspect is going to send a tweet with my account.

I might be a little bit of a hypocrite because I did participate in the Shorty Awards thing that's happening right now. But they're not selling anything or giving anything away (that I know of), so it doesn't set off my spam alarm. It looks like it might be pretty annoying to people getting hundreds or thousands of nominations though, since it tweets their name.

By: unmarketing

unmarketing — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 22:58:57 +0000

"the war is already lost, move on."

Yep, fuck it. Why even try to educate others on how to get the most out of Twitter.

(packs his bags)

Or...................... Since people are coming in droves we can choose to try and educate them.

"early-adopters" to use an over-used phrase, have a choice. They can resent the "n00bs" that come in their land and piss and moan on what it used to be like (like the early Nirvana fans that remember them before Teen Spirit hit MTV and were grunge before it was trendy) or they can do what a true pioneer fan of something should do: help guide the way for people and companies that truly want to use it as a relationship platform.

Sure, I remember Twitter when the trending topics didn't contain #Jonas #IdTapThat and #JustinBieber but that's the part of something growing and evolving.

We can either adapt and help out the millions of people and companies that are willing to learn best practices by reading a great blog post such as this, or just give in, stop listening to Nirvana and say the war is already lost, move on.

I just choose the former.

By: Nathan Hangen

Nathan Hangen — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 21:49:05 +0000

We did one of these for our Beyond Blogging launch, and more than anything, it was great for brand presence. I didn't get any complaints, but I'm sure some were turned off by it.

You're right though, the contest can't suck, and it can't look like spam.