A social media campaign gone wrong

Recently I was reading How to Use Social Media for Better Customer Acquisition on Mashable. Like most professional writers on the topic, the author suggested cultivating conversation to open channels of contact. Good advice, right?

Where do people get an idea like what happened to me the other day? I tweeted something about the weather in my local area. Three local businesses I don’t follow tweeted me back. Two didn’t talk about the weather or what I had shown an interest in. No, they invited me to visit their businesses. These two were hotels. Guess they thought since I lived in the area, I’d need a local hotel where I could stay. You know, in case my bedroom blew off the house in the freakish wind we were having.

The other reply was a restaurant. The comment there was relevant to weather. In other words, something that could start a conversation going.

Which of the three tweets do you thing engendered positive feelings? Which do you think were cursed as spam?

What’s happening here? Is it a clueless boss somewhere telling an underling to “get us on Twitter” without understanding what it means? Is is there someone in my area who is billing themselves as a social media expert and selling businesses advice to do what those two hotels did? If the latter is the case, I can tell these poor misguided hotel folks where to get better advice from someone who actually knows what social media is about.

Dear #NM hotels and restaurants, Sending me spam tweets just because I mention NM is not good social marketing. Love, VirginiaWed Nov 30 15:24:10 via TweetDeck

 

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