Forgive me if this post reads like a rant... I'm tired and well, it is.
One of the greatest things about twitter is the ability to create 'chat rooms' around hashtags. I admit, I don't get to play along as much as I'd like but whenever I can, I try and participate in @Mark_Meyer's #SocialMedia (Tuesdays, 11a central), or @MackCollier's #BlogChat (Sunday's at 8p Central) and I finally made it over to @BethHarte's #PR20chat (Tuesdays at 8p Central). If you haven't joined in on any of these, do... in the words of Tony The Tiger, Theeeey're great!
Once there I find a plethora of smart people freely trading ideas, thoughts and opinions. There is agreement but more importantly, there is debate and y'all know how much I enjoy a hearty debate.
Thing is, and I find this especially troubling in daytime chats like #SocialMeda, is you see these asshats that are lobbing their ad tweets into the stream. When will they learn that interruption advertising is dead and was never alive in the first place in an invitation medium like Twitter!
Now this is obvious spam, but just as troubling is that you also see stuff like this.
Which is less obvious, but spam none-the-less. This tweet was pulled from a recent #socialmedia stream where the very active conversation was about personal branding and had nothing to do with viral content. IMHO this is spam because it is someone hoping to leech traffic off the hashtag chat to click on their little linky. Sad thing, the link takes you to a really cool video where the guy is making music with a tree. Really, he beats the leaves and branches to make music. But rather than spamming a chat room, why can't he just play it straight up. If he really thinks the folks in that room will find value in his content, just @them later with a link and leave off the hashtag.
So my plea today, if you're a spammer, please leave - you're not wanted.
If you're a newbie and you just haven't quite gotten the hang of marketing via twitter, listen. Find the smarties (hint I named a few in this post) and listen to them. Go into these chat rooms and listen. Talk if you want, but only to ask questions or add to the conversation.
But please, don't spam. Your crap is getting in the way of my education.
Ok rant over, now back to educating and helping.
I know there are a ton of really, I mean really, great hashtags out there that I'm not making it to or don't even know exist. Can y'all help me find all the cool hashtag chats by dropping a few in the comment area here? Maybe if we get enough of them I'll do a follow up post with a list to all of them and a little blurb about the topics covered in each. So just leave me the hashtag, organizer's Twitter handle if you know it, and I'll take it from there. Thanks!
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