A pandemic in the community

By Michael Hayes · Opinion Rant Startup Talk

Today marks the start of Social Media Week and as Glasgow is one of the 13 host cities I thought it would be appropriate to highlight a bit of a pandemic I’ve noticed within the Scottish startup community in regards to social media.

Startup Spam is a pandemic in scotland

Whilst I’m not a marketer by trade on the whole I’d like to think I’m pretty competent and do a decent, if not spectacular, job marketing RookieOven with the resources available to me. However I feel there are several high profile initiatives out there with the intention of helping startups in Scotland that I’m worried are having a net detrimental effect on the local community through their use of social media. I feel these initiatives are failing Scottish startups through their spammy communications.

In regards to their use of social media it’s all about creating *buzz*. That is poisonous.

To me it’s a fundamental of the trade that marketing isn’t a scale game, it’s quality. The numbers you should be focusing on are click through, ROI and other quality metrics. Not mentions, RT’s, likes or follows. Seemingly from the outside looking in these institutions are obsessed with the latter. The result, effectively spam.

This spam not only means their message, whatever it is, is completely lost but it also makes me questions the quality of their service. A fixation on these vanity metrics sets the alarm bells going.

The Crime

Peppering tweets with emoji, a shotgun approach to using hashtags and tagging people in messages with utterly no relevance are among my major gripes I see on Twitter. However the spam is spreading, the use of other services stimulating this spread which is further fuelled by cross posting betweens services.

There’s also what effectively boils down to a social media circle jerk; RT’s and #FF’s (yes in 2012) among a merry little gang of followers. To me this adds no value to the those taking part, in fact to me it certainly has a negative impact.

Concern

Why am I writing this post? Because I’m worried. There are interesting startups and very talented founders associated with these initiatives and I’m worried about the negative impact this association is having on their brands and their ambitions to create successful businesses. I’m also worried about the knock on affect this can have on the wider Scottish startup community, we could all far too easily be tainted with the same brush.

You may notice I’ve not called out these spammers. Why won’t I name names? Because I hope they’ll learn. As an initiative with the intention of aiding startups it must also act in itself as a startup. In my eyes this means an ability to build, measure and learn. Hopefully they see the folly in what they’re doing and rectify it.

I only hope the damage hasn’t already been done.

http://floatapp.com Colin Hewitt

Michael. I couldn’t agree more. Its like the equivalent of getting on TechCrunch – most of the users aren’t your target market – and aren’t going to use the services that are being put out there.
Its ultimately a bad understanding of marketing. But because its free – I guess people think it can’t hurt. You’re right – it’s actually having a negative effect – and it looks a little desperate.
Thanks for speaking up about it. You can have my FF this week

http://rookieoven.com/ MDHayes

Thanks for your comment Colin and I’m glad I’m not alone with my concerns.
Look forward to the FF this week

http://www.facebook.com/martinaldersonisthebest Martin Alderson

Compeletely agree Michael — there is one very good example I can name of this. And unfortunately, since they are quite successful, people seem to be using that as a ‘gold standard’ of social media use. It’s quite the opposite.

http://rookieoven.com/ MDHayes

It is worrying. I make no apologies for identifying it as spam as that’s exactly what it is, I hope others read this post and realise it’s exactly the opposite of a ‘gold standard’.

Graham Buchanan

Spam is certainly a problem and I agree with many of the points you make. But it’s not simply a question of not doing it; there are other obstacles that must be overcome as well. Quality control is one; businesses don’t want to just let their employees loose on the web while representing the company and having standardized messages goes some way to preventing this. Secondly to an extent it is still a numbers game. Yes it’s important that there is a certain quality to marketing material and when it becomes an annoyance to people it is certainly detrimental to the campaign, but it is through repeated exposure that ideas/images/products are seared into your head. While clever, humorous and well-targeted marketing should always be the goal, I think spam will continue to be the staple because it’s much easier and much less time consuming.
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