The Spamification of Twitter

I've been exploring Twitter for about a month now, and, frankly, doing so to evaluate it as a marketing tool. It seems to me to be a natural sort of tool to use in promoting a network marketing business, which really is a business that is built upon the strength of your real-life social networks. It was also highly recommended as a useful tool by Jonathan Budd in his (IMHO) excellent MLM Internet Marketing training program, which I am beginning to apply and finding both sensible and useful.

So what is my point? Just that Twitter seems to be overrun by people who think that bombarding their followers with an endless torrent of low value, blatantly promotional solicitations for whatever it is they want them to buy is a great idea. Does the fact the people elect to follow you mean that this is not spam?  Is sending the exact same tweet 20 times a day not spamming? Is sending 50 tweets a day with links back to your sales page or web site really effective? Is that the kind of Personal Brand you want to create for yourself? I think not. Take a look at this short video from Katrina van Oudheusden's blog on "How to Fail to Find Leads on Twitter". She says everything I wanted to say here faster and better.

For me the bottom line is this: People who use Twitter to bury me in solicitations simply become invisible to me. After the second day, I don't even see their tweets as I scroll past. They may have thousands of "followers" but how many of their messages even get seen, let alone read? Who really believes that anyone has "The Big Secret" that will make the rest of us rich, and that out of the goodness of their hearts they want to share it with everyone if only we will visit their web site? I want to stand out, but not that way. I want to to be one of the people who's tweets you will stop to read. If I send out five tweets a day, four of which are completely non-promotional, value adding, interesting messages; if I take a genuine, sincere interest in creating and building social connections and relationships; if my marketing messages are open and straightforward and not sneaky...... then over time I will build a Personal Brand that will attract the people who are looking for what I have to offer. And isn't that what marketing is really all about?