The Twitter Disease?

Yes, my friends; there really is a disease infecting Twitter. It’s spreading like wildfire! Twitter’s got the flu (but it’s hopefully not fatal). Symptoms of the disease include constantly spamming us with your latest and greatest product or opportunity. Always looking for the sale & viewing everyone as a prospect that you can earn money off of. There are many tweeters out there (you know who you are), who bombard us with their product  or service from the get go, including links in their welcome direct mail message to us after we follow them. As Charlie Brown used to say: “Good Grief!”

Did they ever stop to think for one second that we may be interested in getting to know the person behind the website link or sales letter? Perry Belcher has recently begun calling this “The Twitter Disease.” This all-encompassing desire to tell everyone you can as quickly as you can, why they should buy from you right now! I’ve talked to Randy Gage about this and he likens this type of ‘marketing’ to puking on someone that you’ve just met at a party or social event.

To me, what’s most offensive about this type of behavior is that it’s not caring about who you infect, as if you know what’s right for somebody else and you’re going to expose them to it whether they like it or not!

There is a better way. It’s called appreciation marketing. Offering something of value to someone because you appreciate them as a human being, think it might help them or enhance their life, and you value their friendship. What a concept! Offering something of value to someone you care about with no strings attached. Of course, to appreciate someone, you have to first get to know them & develop a relationship. But isn’t that what social media is really all about?