When Marketing Becomes Spam

A slight clarification for those listening to Monday's talk on strategic communication and Twitter. Certainly, it is OK to use Twitter (or other social media tools) to sell things to fans or followers.

The key is frequency.

Just like television has an ad block and newspapers had ads to content ratio, when feeds become nothing - or more importantly, PERCEIVED as - but one pitch to buy a tee-shirt, buy a ticket, renew a subscription, give to a seating plan, participate in a campaign that is when friends drop you.

No one wants to gather together and then be told hey, let me tell you about the wonders of a product.

THAT is what leads people to drop you like a rock and have a really bad taste.

Remember, the Internet has a very strong giving culture. One great line I heard today from the podium was you better provide a very high ratio of good to self promotion. And the mentioned 10:1 didn't sound bad. That means promote 10 other things before you promote yourself, or give 10 good pieces of information before asking for a buy.

The fact that those kind of "selling" pitches accounted for more percentage and reasons to depart than the one you hear far too often - you tweet too much - should be the takeaway.

If you are providing good, interesting, useful information, people are not likely to leave you due to frequency of messaging.

If you are not giving them value, they leave. Pretty simple.