Each time I log in to my Twitter account some or other company is giving away prizes to the winners of their twitter contest. Sounds Good eh!? Not really!
These Twitter contests are at an all time high. Nowadays, every other tweet
on my timeline is ending with some or other brand sponsored hashtag. Even
those people who used to make fun of these competitions earlier, are now active
participants. After all who doesn’t want an iPhone or A Merc for FREE. For me, these tweets annoy the hell out of me.
What is even more annoying are the brands that I follow on Twitter. Most of
the brand handles retweet the answers to their contest questions. Now just imagine
hundreds of replies getting
Rt-ed every hour and all you can see on your timeline is why someone likes a
particular mobile or beer. Who the hell is interested in knowing your favorite
beer!? 
If you ask those SMM masterminds, they will say Twitter contest is one of the
best way to engage with potential customers. I agree, but most of the time
these contests cross the line, from being interesting/hilarious to being
downright annoying (to put it decently). And at last there are maximum 3 winners and thousands of cribbers.
I don’t think it is the right way of generating followers or engaging people, it is more like luring people to your brand with false promises which is the soul job of advertising. Isn’t it? Social media is a great platform for companies to engage with people, make real connections and create life long loyalty but It shouldn’t be done by spamming our timelines by retweeting each and every tweet you receive.
There has to be some other way of interacting with people/ potential customers other than Twitter contests. I don’t know what would that be but this twitter competition thingy is not working well for the companies. I can say that with surety as I have un-followed many of the brands and people only because I was sick of them spamming my timeline with contest tweets and I am sure many of my fellow tweeters have done the same.
Apart from this, some companies do not even bother to reply to your complaints but are quite active in such contests. Talk about Customer Satisfaction.
ReplyDeleteIrritating? Yes.
ReplyDeleteBad Strategy? Maybe No.
Going by the number of people falling for these sponsored trends, these brands are reaching out to a large number of people, whether we like it or not. And as long as Orkuttiyas roam on the earth searching for free iPads, these strategies will work. Anyway, Twitter needs to make money from these sponsored trends I guess. Going by the limited number of options they have in their revenue model, we cant blame Twitter either for this.