Then Mention Me - Marketing within Twitter's 140 character limitation

Abstract

Twitter has been proven to be a great marketing resource to get participating users, customers and website members. Large businesses use the social media platform by communicating with its customers, prior to simply pushing ad messages to target audiences. The social media influence on the internet makes communication an important and valuable asset. However, it requires a large budget and there are a limited amount of previous research available. With the use of Then Mention me http://thenmention.me], a system to automate promotional messages, combined with a quantitative data collection example, this paper sets out to explore the possibilities of Twitter marketing and communication aspects. Is it possible to send pre-defined bulk messages to Twitter users, with the intent to promote a company, service or a product, without being treated as spam? The results show that if the tweets sent out include an understanding and knowledge behind Twitter lingo, culture, context and trust, receivers do not treat the messages as spam. The larger implications of the results discusses communication as one of the most important aspects of digital marketing, especially in the new social media landscape.