Posts tagged newcastle

Screenshot of Mr Quib

Some companies really have not got the hang of this social media thing, and the etiquette that is expected necessary to carry it out successfully.  The internet is no longer a one way medium where people read information from the big sites and output little themselves, most people now have a twitter account, a blog, a tumblr or any other number of ways of making themselves heard.

It’s because of this participation and feedback system that companies engaging in social media must take care to do it correctly, or else deal with the repercussions of going at it half cocked. One such example of this is the company Mr Quib, a deals and promotional company which deals with Newcastle at the moment, but looks set to expand to other cities.

In the North East of England we have a twitter hashtag which is #nefollowers, which is typically used to share information that tweeps think would be useful to other people in the region.  Typically you can expect to find news information on here, weather reports, traiffic info, job vacancies etc – you know, the kind of thing that people living in the region would like to be kept informed of.  Sure, there is the odd advert on there, and as long as it is kept to a minimum then no one seems to mind too much. Then you get people who take it too far…

Mr Quib – who is on twitter as @MrQuibNewcastle, has taken to spamming their deals on this hashtag ever hour, on a loop, without fail.  This gets very annoying, especially considering that even if you block a person on twitter they will still appear in any search you may do on a hashtag (such as a search column in Tweetdeck).  Twitter is a follow based system, if people want to find out about the latest deals then all they have to do is follow the account, there is no need to spam a hash tag every hour.  Do it sporadically to attempt to attract new followers, but not constantly.

As far as I’m concerned, this abuse of a local hashtag is wholly unacceptable, at least if you’re spamming it every hour (once or twice a day, sure I wouldn’t mind so much) and is a sure fire way to guarantee I will have nothing to do with your company.  If a company chooses to advertise using such invasive and spamming methods then I will personally never use their services and will actively recommend against them.  I’ve even mailed the companies I’ve seen advertised on Mr Quib to let them know this.

I’d urge anyone getting into the social media advertising space to think carefully about what they are doing, what the likely reaction will be from the target audience, and what the potential damage to the brand could be if their advertising is handled badly.

(and yes, I realise I have tagged this post with #nefollowers, but more so that the people annoyed by this constant spamming can see the post and have their say, I’ll only be posting it once)

~Shepy

UPDATE: I got a response from Mr Quib, which is on it’s own post: Mr Quib – Speedy and positive response