You’re right. The tools are out there. They’re free. People will use them however they want regardless of any hand-wringing by purists and pundits. All the same, as an advisor to businesses, I’m always trying to figure out how new tools can improve marketing effectiveness, and where the boundaries are that either enhance or detract from a company’s brand equity.

But it ’s always refreshing to be reminded of how sane people view things.

The fact is, with all this social media stuff — and most anything on the web — it’s all out there to be used, modified, corrupted, ruined and, sometimes, improved. Some people hate all change (see comments to ANY site redesign), and some people gracefully go with the flow. It’s naive to think that Twitter could remain the pure, marketing-free domain of regular folks without a commercial agenda. Either the tool/platform evolves into something that becomes more useful to more people or it’s a victim of its own success.

Meanwhile, what are the haters (accusing Kmart/Brogan of twitter spam) suggesting as a remedy or alternative? I hear lots of criticism but no solutions, which is my #1 beef with so much of the social media/web 2.0 navel-gazing (but not Chris Kenton, of course, who blogs about helpful strategies all the time; see latest post).

Interesting note about Barry. I expect you’re right–he’d be more of a “regular guy” if he removed the “Best Buy CMO” from his handle–but then, he’d have to work a lot harder to build a network. I wonder how he views the tradeoff. I spoke with the VP of Marketing for another Fortune 500, who said he was tired of his social media focus being constantly on the negative complaints–that it was driving their whole sm brand presence. He’s actively working on ways to turn that around–maybe following Dell, doing idea storms or something like that.

I’m still stuck a bit, though, on what defines the bar between shilling and acceptable paid promotion in blogging/twitter–beyond the pure efficiency metric of follow/not follow. I agree that clearly, what Kawasaki and Godin can get away with is not indicative of what anyone else will be able to pull off. But I’m concerned about what Kmart was able to do–using Tweets as a contest entry mechanism, which is brilliantly viral, but turns ordinary people into advertising channels to their network. We’re going to see that concept go big real soon, before there’s an outcry.

Now people like Guy Kawasaki (and Seth Godin and Steve Rubel and Robert Scoble, etc.) will have greater leeway on this. Most of the people that we follow on Twitter, FriendFeed, and Facebook, we do so out of curiosity. Someone peaked on interest. With those like Guy, Seth, and Steve, they get followed in part because of the gravitas they bring with them. It’s almost an “honor” to have them follow you. In fact I’ve seen people tweet to their followers that “Robert Scoble commented on my blog”.

I recently began following a guy named Barry Judge on Twitter. Barry is the CMO of BestBuy. He, perhaps mistakenly, uses @BestBuyCMO. He’s trying to engage people as a marketing guy but people see him as a complaint center. The perception of him is vastly different I think because of him. He becomes a corporate figure and less “human”, even though I believe he wants to be, how do I say this, like the rest of us.

The likely result? He’s viewed a mouthpiece for the corporation, and I bet it’s more difficult to promote stuff that way. If he was @Barry Judge who happens to be the CMO of BestBuy, then I think it would seemingly be more “cool” to exchange ideas and sometimes get promotional messages. I’m sure he’s doing fine on Twitter, but I would imagine he’d be more successful if he took that other route.

I totally agree about the merging of personal and professional lives–and I’ve talked to a lot of people trying to come to terms with that. We’ve become so used to siloing our lives, to the extent that we often don’t know much about the people we do business with every day. On the other hand, I think a lot of people also find comfort in that–in having parts of their lives that are separate and private. On the whole, I think integration is better–it puts a human face on relationships that are often sterile.

I like your optimism that mercenary promoters will go away. I’m just exploring why they may not, and trying to understand how their approach to social media might even be packaged as “good marketing”. I mean, the line between snake oil salesman and fabulously successful corporate marketer hasn’t always been clear, which is why so few consumers trust marketers. I think it’s important to explore that line the more social media accelerates.

Do you think trust is a requirement for Twitter when there’s such a social imperative to have a large following? When so many pundits talk about the importance of influence, and the measure of influence being the size of your following, I think many of us are driven to grow our networks even in the absence of trust. Size matters more. Maybe that’s just an artifact of the early stage we’re in, but I don’t think Kawasaki sees it that way. He’s open about building a large network of “nobodies”, because that can be leveraged into exposure and influence. Again, I think it’s pretty mercenary, and it’s not my philosophy, but I’m not sure he’s wrong. It’s just an application of a DM approach–throw a wide net and drive your conversion percentage, trust and relationships come later.

I really appreciate your comments about Permission Marketing. I think the notion that the only standard that must be met on Twitter is whether or not people are following you will lead to a lot of behavior that sours people on the medium. Like email spam. After a while, it just becomes a pain to deal with.

I look forward to continuing the dialog.

With all Twitter relationships there must be trust. Trust happens when there is balance before broadcast.

Guy (and everyone on Twitter) must build up enough trust over time–enough social capital–to share promotional messaging.

I share every blog post from The Responsible Marketing Blog with my readers, sometimes more than once since people read Twitter at different times. I assume the people following me are looking for information on the things I’ve used to describe myself “Responsible Marketing Evangelist on the Responsible Marketing Blog, CEO of Outsource Marketing, speaker. Strategy, social good, naming, social media, yada yada.”

Now hold that thought.

In Seth Godin’s classic “Permission Marketing,” he claims that if a message isn’t anticipated, personal and relevant — it’s spam.

So given the above, here’s another take on the “Twitter spam is an oxymoron” comment:

When I go off topic, rambling about my lunch, my kids or something not related to my description of myself, am I spamming my followers?

Maybe that’s a question worth asking too.

Thanks for the note of reason. I agree with you–we’re not falling off a cliff here. But then, we’re only seeing the early stages of what most of the pundits in their 2009 predictions are forseeing will be a drive towards models that monetize blogging content. I don’t have a problem with that. I come from journalism, and despite protestations to the deep trench between advertising and editorial, it was never lost on me who was at the top of the masthead: the publisher.

But what I’m looking for here is some indication of how we’re managing the balance between the interests of the reader–how we build a following of trust–and the interests of the advertiser. If the only line is whether or not people will follow you and stay with you, as Kawasaki suggests, I think we’re walking out on a ledge.

I’ll freely admit I haven’t thought through all the ramifications of this to have a strong counter argument, but I sense in my gut that we’re face to face with an issue we should all be paying attention to very carefully. And frankly, what Kawasaki is saying opened up a very dark door that I had naively wandered past. I’m not saying he’s wrong. I just think it’s mercenary.

Thanks for moving the conversation forward.

When If ollow someone on Twitter, I expect interaction. Sometimes that can be promotional. And that’s fine. But it is a two-way channel. If brands view it just as a broadcast medium, they could damage the culture and then suffer the consequences.

Let’s say instead there were many of these contests going on all at once. People getting hundreds of retweets from their hundreds of followers. It, again, would ruin the experience.

So I’d say that if you seek to gain a many followers as possible, and you’re not “famous” like Guy Kawasaki, then you’re going to have to build good will before you start broadcasting messages.