This post is part rant, part case study. Lately, I’ve been extremely annoyed by two campaigns on Twitter.

The first campaign was by Squarespace. They asked people to use the hash tag #squarespace in their tweets. People could do this randomly and were encouraged to do it as often as possible. Squarespace would select a lucky winner every day and give that person a gift voucher for the Apple Store.

The second campaign was by Moonfruit. It was a similar campaign where, during a week, people could enter a competition to win one Apple MacBook Pro each day. People were automatically entered into the competition if they used the hash tag #moonfruit in their tweets and again, people were stimulated to do it as often as possible.

These brands have succeeded in getting their brand names into the social media space, but it’s been done in a dubious way. Moreover, they haven’t performed any true form of consumer engagement, which just means that they let people flood Twitter with their brand name without any proper context.

Don’t use social media as a cheap promotional tool. Use social media to genuine build relationships.