When Is It Spam?

Like most people, I hate spam. But I recently needed to promote a product on Twitter, which left me having to try to figure out where the line is drawn between spam and reasonable product promotion. I also regularly have to walk the line when I promote my blog posts.

I still don’t know if I’ve drawn it right. I’m interested in your opinion. In addition to your comments on this post, I’d love it if you’d take my quick survey, so I can report on the overall results.

Background

My product is TweetPackages: basically the equivalent of the upcoming Lists functionality that Twitter recently announced. I needed to promote individual Tweet Packages to sets of users, interested in specific topics. As an example, I created Tweet Packages for various NFL football teams, like this one for the Seahawks.

I promoted in two main ways:

• I tweeted about the packages using hashtags for the relevant topics. An example tweet is “#NFL #Rams – Follow the team with this Tweet Package http://bit.ly/A2EYc”
  
  
• I tweeted to each person who was included in a package, letting them know they were in it. An example of that is “@heyjudeonline You’re in a Tweet Package! http://bit.ly/J8YWD (To put this package on your website, see http://bit.ly/3hQ7oh.)”

Who Do I Tweet to?

In general, I didn’t tweet about packages to my own followers. I did tweet to specific audiences via hashtags. So, for my football packages, I tweeted to those searching for or talking about the Seahawks, the NFL, etc. For my television packages, I tweeted specifically to people talking about Glee or Melrose Place, by using the appropriate hashtags.

How Often Do I Tweet?

One of the hardest decisions was how often to tweet my promotional messages. I started at a very low volume. But when I checked the timeline by searching for, say, #NFL, my tweets barely registered. (Of course, some of that was because there Tweeps who were swamping the timeline with their own promotional messages.)

I didn’t want to be obnoxious, but I also did want to have a chance of football fans seeing my tweets. So, I upped the volume somewhat. I found it challenging trying to ensure my message appeared frequently enough to be seen, but not so frequently that it was seen as spam. Or so frequently that it would appear repeatedly in people’s TweetDeck groups, and the like.

Frequency, Relevancy, Reach

As I evaluated my own dilemma, I realized the issues I was dealing with boiled down to the same ones that online advertisers deal with. (Hmmm, what a surprise.) I needed to get my message out. But in order to do so, and not to feel like a spammer, I wanted to get good reach, with good relevancy, but limited frequency.

• Reach—The number of different people who see my tweet (or an ad).
  
  
• Frequency—The number of times a given person sees my tweet (or an ad).
  
  
• Relevancy—The quality of the match between my tweet’s (or ad’s) contents and the reader’s interests. I.e. if this reader is a big Jets football fan and my tweet is about following the Jets football players on Twitter, the tweet is pretty relevant.
  

My goal was to get my message out to people who would be interested in it (relevancy). And to get as many of those target customers as possible to see it (reach). But not to make them see it more than once or twice (frequency). If they saw my tweet once or twice and didn’t click, they weren’t interested.

Value, Tone, Relationship

Some other factors that don’t necessarily come up for online advertisers, but might pertain in a social environment:

• Value—The amount of free value included as part of the tweet or the content it’s linked to. For example, the tweet might include a discount for Twitter users. Or the link it gives might include some good information as well as a sales pitch. Or, even if the product is not relevant to you or something you want at this time, maybe you see it as generally useful and therefore are willing to excuse the somewhat irrelevant tweet.
  
  
• Tone—The “socialness” of the tweet. Does it sound like an ad, or sound more like a question, or a helpful tip given in passing.
  
  
• Relationship—The nature of your relationship with the person who tweets, such as whether you chose to follow them (versus automatically followed them because they followed you). Or whether you’ve had conversations with them in Twitter. Or whether they’ve been a regular source of good information or entertainment before the promotional tweet.

When Do You Think It’s Spam?

Hence my questions. I’m assuming from the user’s perspective, reach isn’t an issue. In other words, as a Twitter user, I really don’t care how many times your tweet appears as long as I don’ t see it over and over again.

Relevancy

• Is it spam if you tweet about a product or business and use hash tags?
• Is it spam if you tweet about a product or business and don’t use hash tags?
• Is it spam if you tweet about a product or business to your followers?
• Is it only spam if you tweet about a product or business and use hash tags that don’t actually pertain to the product/business? (Like tweeting advertisements using trending topic hash tags.)

Frequency

• Is it spam if you see the same tweet even just two times?
• Is it only spam if you see the same tweet multiple times a day?
• Is it spam if you see the same tweet several times over the course of the week?
• What about if you see different tweet text, but they all link to the same site?

Usefulness

• Do you view tweets less as spam when a blogger is promoting their blog posts, even if they repeatedly promote the same blog post during the week?
• Are you more forgiving of some products than others? Does it depend upon whether you think the product is actually useful? To you? Or to others?
• If the tweet promotes a link to a site or product, and you find something useful there (like a good blog post or tool), are you more willing to put up with seeing the same promotional tweet appear a few times?

Tone

• Is it spam if it’s boastful: here’s my great product and click my link to read more?
• Is it spam if it’s joking or entertaining in nature?
• Is it spam if the tweet seems to just mention the product in passing?

Relationship

• Is it spam if it comes from someone you chose to follow (rather than blindly followed because they followed you)?
• Is it spam if you’ve had several Twitter conversations with this person?
• Is it spam if you’ve followed this person for a while and generally find their tweets useful or entertaining or otherwise engaging?
• Would you view it as spam if, despite having a relationship with this Tweep, they sent the same promotional message too many times?

I’d love to hear what you think. And I’d like to quanitfy this a bit. So, please comment below and take my quick survey.