Don’t Spam Twitter – Get Others To Do It For You

Well, the Moonfruit MacBook Pro giveaway is over. Early. They promised to give 10 MacBook Pros to 10 lucky ‘winners’ in 10 days. The competition consisted simply of using their company name as a hashtag in a tweet. In the end, they gave them away in 7 days. Their web site gives the reason for bringing the end of the ‘competition’ forward as a reaction to the ‘crazy and wonderful’ response and because they want to ‘remain respectful to the Twitterverse’. Mmm.

In truth, except for the twitterati waiting for delivery of their new toys, the Moonfruit campaign has caused mixed reactions – to say the least – among Twitter users. For instance, musician and Tuttler par excellence Steve Lawson suggested unfollowing anyone who used the Moonfruit hashtag. He was not alone in finding the manipulation of the hashtag service/system both distasteful and a PR failure.

Another Habitat?

Possibly not quite on the same scale as Habitat’s disastrous foray into Twitter in June (explained in this excellent post on Social Media Today) but where Habitat’s campaign had sprung from ignorance and stupidity, the Moonfruit campaign was a more deliberate attempt to game the system.

The plan for the campaign must have seemed brilliant. Choosing a MacBook Pro as a prize – and 10 of them – was guaranteed to appeal to a large section of Twitter’s core users. It also ensured the campaign got widespread coverage over and above Twitter itself. Brand Republic, for instance, had an early positive report about Moonfruit on July 1st after the first winner was announced.

Low hanging…..

But what positives did Moonfruit hope to extract from gaming a trending hashtag and gaining a small but still significant percentage of Twitter traffic? It probably seemed a good idea at the time but it’s hard to see exactly where the lead generation was meant to come. And. although the campaign was dressed up in terms of a 10th birthday celebration for the company, there must have been some ROI expectation to make it worth while to cough up for 10 MacBook Pros and their delivery. Are their likely customer base watching hashtags? If I miss out on a MacBook Pro am I more likely to get them to design my next web site?

It’s obvious Moonfruit now have doubts of their own about the value of the campaign, as evidenced by its early termination. They may feel they have lost both revenue and reputation. On the plus side, if their customer base wasn’t watching the hashtags in the first place, it’s probably also unaware of the bad feeling now associated with the campaign.

A wee confession

I tweeted. I did. I used the hashtag and hoped I would win. I spammed Twitter. Only once, though. They made me do it! Think Homer Simpson and donuts: I just had the image of a MacBook Pro in my mind. MacBook Pro, though; not Moonfruit.