One of the not so new Twitter spamming techniques is to add a Twitter username before your worthless message. So instead of “Check out X website”, we have “@username Check out X website”. Of course, X website can be easily replaced with whatever service, product or job offering. Apply the same technique for hundreds and hundreds of users from your spammy Twitter account that follows no one and has a couple of followers and maybe some of the people you reach are actually interested and will click your link.

While this might work in some accidental cases, it will take quite the same amount of time to search for people actually interested in what you’re selling and send them the replies. If you can do that after following and getting to know them, even better. Of course, your Twitter account should be about more than @replies to those you follow, but that’s another side of the story. Continue reading

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While browsing through my LinkedIn account, I just noticed this question about apps that allow you to schedule tweets. Some of the answers stated no one should ever schedule tweets, as it is spammy. Automation is bad, don’t do it. And I started wondering. Is it really spam? Or is it just a way to make work easier and give your followers a break? And the answer is, like always, it depends

I should first say I manage a few Twitter accounts. On some I schedule tweets, on others I don’t. On those who are there to provide news on a certain topic, I do schedule tweets. I usually find the news all at once and just sending them all out at the same time is actually more spammy to some users than scheduling them throughout the day. That does not mean I ignore the conversation. I check the stream every couple of hours, check what others are saying, retweet, reply, thank people for their comments and retweets.

When it comes to blog posts, a lot of what I write is scheduled. And when I set the publishing time and date, I also set the tweet. Basically because I tend to get caught up and I might forget. I do check it, I do interact, as I said before. And I really don’t think programming tweets is a form of spam.

When all your tweets are programmed and you are never there to talk, reply or answer questions, it is definitely spam. You are there to broadcast more or less forcefully whatever you please and you really don’t care what your followers have to say. But from that to saying any form of automation and of rendering your work fast and effective is spam is a long road to be traveled.

What about you? Do you schedule tweets? Do you think it’s spam when others do it? Should we ban all automation, good or bad from social media? I say not, yet it all needs to be approached with great care. And over to you…

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I’ll keep this one short and sweet. I get a lot of Twitter direct message spam. I overlook some of it, because it’s unintentional. I don’t think all Twitter users a) realize they send direct messages to those following them with Mafia wars requests and b) can tell how utterly annoying it is when it comes a few times a day from different people. But I draw the line at so called online professionals doing the very same. Stop! It’s annoying.

Yes, if you have a twitter account that you use casually to fool around with friends, by all means, play all the Mafia Wars you want. But if it’s a business account and you are trying to show how much of an expert you are, you should know better! No, you can’t get away with it as easily! You’re on probation! I follow people in my line of business because I admire them. We can brainstorm, discuss our ideas, share news. But I can’t look up to spammers or waste my Twitter time on them

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A lot of PR agencies or corporate PR departments still believe spam is the way to go. They have built or bought quite a data base over the years, they keep expanding it and then shoot an email to everyone on the list. While they might have had some common ground when starting to develop the data base, over time names and emails just keep being added without any further checks. Who cares if you’re interested, we’ll email you anyway.

I am not talking about asking for permission, or allowing people to unsubscribe, I’m talking about at least making sure they are remotely interested in what they’ll receive. For example, why would I be interested in a debate held in Beverly Hills between a Rabbi and some woman I know nothing about on dating in a material world and if money can or cannot buy love?

If you’re gonna spam, at least be wiser than the average spammer! You should be able to at least do that if you’ve ever read anything, even a tiny article on PR and/or marketing. If you’re going to take your chance and spam, at least make sure people won’t delete your email because they simply don’t care!

I’d advise you to refrain from spam alltogether. Sure, contact someone to introduce yourself and ask for their permission to send press releases. But don’t start out with an attached PR and a one-liner asking them to call you for details!

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What I think you shouldn’t have missed last week…

The last week of January 2009 comes with the 20th edition of the Monday reading tips brought to you by Words of a Broken Mirror.

We’ll start with some interesting top 10 trends for 2009 from Samll Business Trends: the top 10 software publishing trends by Tim Berry and the top 10 global trends for SMBs by Laurel Delaney.

Mihaela Lica raises the issues of spam-like ads on Twitter, an attempt thought of by Magpie, not Twitter’s monetization team as you might have thought.

Lip-sticking has published an inspirational guest post by Mary Schmidt on powerful first ladies, what they have achieved and what women in general can accomplish, regardless of being married to powerful men.

Brad Shorr of Word Sell Inc. discussed the issue of business-to-business sales and how managing daily pains helps build or demolish businesses and individual careers.

Brian Solis of PR 2.0 pointed out that social networks are growing up as more adults are joinging the conversation.

Hoping you’ve enjoyed this week’s list, I invite you, as always, to share your recommendations in the comment box. See you next week!

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