How to make yourself into a loathsome spammer

It seems PETA screwed up in a very instructive way. On Twitter, the organization direct-messaged more than 150 mommy bloggers with the following message:

Never-b4-seen photos that will convince parents never 2 take their kids 2 the circus: http://bit.ly/7ha9NL

The link takes you to a site that reports to show people being mean to baby elephants. The goal, it seems was to ignite some buzz about how the circus is not a good place to take kids. Because the circus is mean to baby elephants while training them.

Poor move on PETA’s part. Blogger Allie Sullivan reported the incident and comments at PETA Spam Wednesday? What Not To Do:

… when it comes to social media and audience development, you can’t think of a “target audience” … you must think about the people who you will be engaging with…. My advice to any company or organization would be “don’t spam, don’t spam, don’t spam.” It’s pretty easy not to do and focusing your energy on the relationships you’re building everyday with your supporters will be so much more rewarding in the end, trust me!

Most of us grew up on mass media, where our entire way of thinking is built around broadcasting information of our choice to audiences of our choice in hopes that enough of them will be motivated to make the effort worth our effort.

That’s not how social media work. There, the foundation is relationship and offering value. It takes more time and effort to get the word out. In fact, you can only get the word out if people want the word; you are no longer in control in the new media.

Thanks to Adrants for the tip.