On Twitter, you can use the hashtag (#) along with a word or phrase to make it easy for people to search for that phrase within Twitter. For example, over the past few weeks, news regarding the Iranian election has often been tweeted with the tag: #Mousavi. (Mousavi is the name of the candidate who many believe actually won the election.) This makes it easy to enter the phrase #Mousavi in the Twitter search and only turn up relevant results. It's a way to guarantee your Tweet will be seen by people looking for news on this specific subject. And, with interest in the Iran election running high, it's a way to guarantee your tweet will be seen by lots of people.
As business owners, we all want to raise awareness of our brand, but surely no company would be so tacky and tasteless as to write tweets promoting their store and include the #Mousavi tag so that it turns up under this heavily searched term. Right? Well unfortunately one UK-based furniture company did exactly that, exploiting the Iranians struggle for demorcracy in order to sell home accesories.
In some of the worst hashtag spam we’ve seen in a long time, European furniture maker Habitat has been caught spamming Twitter to increase signups to its customer database.
More specifically, the retailer was caught adding topics from the
trending topics – from #iphone to #Mousavi – to the front of Tweets
trying to get people to sign up to a customer database. One Tweet read:
“#MOUSAVI Join the database for free to win a £1,000 gift card.” The
cheap trick has led many Twitter users to ask: what does selling furniture have to do with the situation in Iran?
Read the full article at Mashable. It's the absolute wrong way to use Twitter and has tarnished the brand's reputation in my mind. Take note.