Twitter Bonanza

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.

Pinterest- Generating Interest!

Pinterest is another example of ever altering social media. From past few days people around the web are predicting Pinterest as the social media site to watch in 2012. Foreign brands have already started using Pinterest and amassing tens and thousands of followers though Indian companies are still to make their presence felt.

A quick overview of what Pinterest is all about. It is a pinboard-styled social photo sharing website. The service allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections. The site's mission statement is to "connect everyone in the world through the 'things' they find interesting."
Apart from doing the standard stuff of 'like' and 're-pin', Pinterest allow users to follow individual boards which saves you from following the user and everything else they pin which is a unique feature of the site.

Now, how Pinterest can help companies/Individuals and their Product?

1) After creating an account (Pinterest is an invite only network so make sure you get yourself invited here ), decide how you want to display your product. For example if flipkart wants to pitch its pens and diaries, it can create a board with a catchy headline to display the collection of pens and diaries.

2) With a feature like 'add a pin' people who would click on your images, will land up on your site and can make purchases.

3) Another important feature of Pinterest is it allows you to integrate your pinterest account to your Facebook page so you can connect your fanpage which will help in better presentation of your products to your fans.

4) It helps in understanding customer perception about your brand and products. Pinterest can give you an insight into that by simply taking a look at the name of the boards that users have pinned content from your web site. 

5) An interesting fact about Pinterest according to Google is that women make up a whopping 82% of Pinterest’s audience with 70% of them are under the age of 45. As in today's age the phrase "customer is the king" has evolved to "customer is the Queen" that makes Pinterest the right place to pitch your product.

6) Lastly, Pinterest is one of the best option for branding your product because of its VISUAL nature.

Decision lies with you- "To Pin or not to Pin"