Integrity: yours and the brands. Tolerance: your audience’s.
Brian Solis, he of PR2.0 fame, has an excellent guest post up on TechCrunch diving into the ongoing debate about the utility, proper format, and appropriateness of sponsored or ad-based Twitter tweets. (for more commentary, see the Techmeme threads). With the rise of ad-based Twitter networks such as TweetROI, Twittad, and IZEA’s latest, plus pending FTC guidelines for disclosure around sponsored social media, not to mention Twitter’s own search for a valid business model, the issue is rapidly coming to a head.
Brian points out some possible solutions: using an “AD” prefix or “#ad” suffix, the word “sponsored” somewhere in the tweet, a disclosure landing page, or even color coding of affected tweets directly from Twitter. All have positives and negatives, and I’d invite you to read the TechCrunch article and comment section for more on the subject. Whatever the end solution, before you consider incorporating sponsored tweets into your own Twitter activities, either as the Twitterer or sponsor, you must consider the impact they could have. And I’m not talking about “OMG HUGE TRAFFIC!!!”
Ignoring spammers and explicitly commercial Twitter accounts, Twitter is still all about trading on integrity. Your followers – your audience – builds up a certain level of trust in you and what you tweet. Tear that down via a lack of disclosure about sponsored tweets, and watch your audience disappear (along with your value to your sponsor…bad for all involved).
For the sponsor, a lack of disclosure also begins to wear at trust in your own brand’s integrity. Look shifty, look sneaky, appear as if you are trying to secretly “buy” access to a community, and be prepared to suffer a loss of trust in your brand among your current and prospective customers.
Even assuming all sides are open and up front about the sponsored tweets and use explicit #hastags or prefixes, you also have to judge carefully your audience’s tolerance for the ads. Too many, and again watch follower counts and general goodwill towards the Twitterer and sponsor move in the wrong direction. It is incredibly easy to unfollow on Twitter, just like there are zero costs to unsubscribing from an RSS feed in the blogosphere. For both the sponsor and the Twitterer, it pays to be hyper sensitive to the ad tolerance of your audience.
Sponsored tweets are here, as Brian rightly points out, and will likely rapidly grow as more people and companies discover the power of Twitter as a community and broad communications tool. It’s hard to argue that the best form of marketing via Twitter is via Earned Tweets, but it’s also hard to discount the potential of paid tweets. Personally I tend to dislike paid tweets, and unfollow (or at least DM peeved) those who run them, so I advocate shooting for earned tweets every time.
But if done right, with full, explicit disclosure on every affected tweet and a keen eye for follower fatigue or blowback, they likely could be a very effective marketing tool.
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