{"id":348,"date":"2010-06-25T23:22:11","date_gmt":"2010-06-25T23:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.renando.com\/blog\/?p=348"},"modified":"2021-01-15T21:52:30","modified_gmt":"2021-01-15T21:52:30","slug":"do-you-want-spam-on-your-pizza-personality-a-twitter-case-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/do-you-want-spam-on-your-pizza-personality-a-twitter-case-study\/","title":{"rendered":"Do you want spam on your pizza personality? A Twitter case study"},"content":{"rendered":"

A month and over 600 responses into the My Pizza Personality project <\/a>and my disillusionment with Twitter has solidified like congealed cheese.\u00a0 After weeks of selling any self-respect in 140 characters or less, I now have a bad taste in my mouth.\u00a0 However, that won\u2019t stop me from going back for seconds with the thought that the next bite might be different.<\/p>\n

\"Twitter<\/p>\n

Pizza Personality Project Purpose<\/h2>\n

One of the hypotheses behind the My Pizza Personality project <\/a>is that social media communities may mitigate barriers to environmental purchases.\u00a0 \u00a0This is based on premise that:<\/p>\n

1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 environmental purchases require greater cognitive effort;<\/p>\n

2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 trust reduces the amount of cognitive effort in purchases; and<\/p>\n

3)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 trust is built in community.<\/p>\n

It stands to reason then that people who share ideologies in trusted social media communities would be more willing to engage with brands that shared both those ideals and participated in those communities.\u00a0 The issue with Twitter, however, is that everyone\u2019s talking, but I am not convinced that anyone is listening.<\/p>\n

Spam Disclaimer<\/h2>\n

First, a disclaimer: I am not advocating spam.\u00a0 By spam I mean unsolicited notifications you can\u2019t avoid.\u00a0 Complaining about spam on Twitter, however, is a bit hypocritical.<\/p>\n

Twitter allows everyone to have a conversation with everyone.\u00a0 I mention your name in my tweet and I am now having a conversation with everyone plus you.\u00a0 It is like a preacher on a corner soap box saying your name as you walk by.<\/p>\n

Domino\u2019s Pizza “holdouts” campaign in the States<\/a> mentioned people by name who had not tried their pizza.\u00a0 Instead of telling everyone they need to try their pizza through mass communications channels like TV or mail drops, they said, \u201cScott, you need to try our pizza!\u201d<\/p>\n

You can see how this presents a grey area for the spam category.\u00a0 What if instead of pizza the product was Viagra: \u201cScott, you need Viagra!\u201d.\u00a0 What if Scott was in the process of a mental meltdown or arguing with his family when the press rushed his door?\u00a0 Tricky.<\/p>\n

With My Pizza Personality, I am not offering blue pills or Nigerian scams.\u00a0 I am offering a potentially fun personality test for your contribution to research.\u00a0 When you post on Twitter, you start the conversation with the world by saying something about topics related to my research.\u00a0 All I am doing is fulfilling my duty as an active listener by responding.<\/p>\n

The Approach<\/h2>\n

My Twitter engagement strategy was very intentional.\u00a0 I am not building brand loyalty.\u00a0 I do not care about followers.\u00a0 I am not even interested in retweets so much.\u00a0 I want people to take the survey, and after they take the survey, to tell their friends.\u00a0 That is my business objective. There is no re-acquisition, no customer retention.\u00a0 After we do business, we\u2019ve had our fling and we go our separate ways with a shared sense of slight satisfaction.<\/p>\n

Like the dating scene, I found face to face and direct emails friend referrals were the best way to get potential respondents into proverbial pizza bed with me.\u00a0 Friends telling friends on Facebook also yields profitable conversions.\u00a0 Twitter on the other hand, not so much.<\/p>\n

On its packaging, Twitter presents itself as a massive conversation between everyone in the world.\u00a0 I\u2019ll buy that proposition, since I want to have a conversation with anyone talking about the environment<\/a>, personality<\/a> or pizza<\/a>.\u00a0 So with my Tweetdeck set up to search accordingly, I started chatting.<\/p>\n

The results<\/h2>\n

\"Twitter<\/p>\n

So how did it work? If time and my short attention span were not factors, I would still be at it.\u00a0 For my average 25 tweets per day at around 2 minutes per tweet<\/a>, I yielded between 2 to 10 survey completions per day. \u00a0My time-to-tweet was high based on checking out conversation starters before I tweeted, looking at recent tweets and any links and details in the person\u2019s Twitter profile.<\/p>\n

Outside of the majority silence, I only had one person call me out for being a spammer<\/a>.\u00a0 His Twitter status states he is a Master Complainer<\/a>, so I can write him off my conscience.\u00a0 On the contrary, I had many engage with my schpeel (like here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

I also went 1% over my monthly data usage on my iPhone and fell behind in my assignments due to using my transit time to tweet.\u00a0 Hence, why I am now looking into other less resource-intensive methods such as search engine optimisation and paid advertisement.<\/p>\n

Twitter Teachings<\/h2>\n

So what did I learn through this?<\/p>\n