Show HN: Tweet about your product to the followers of your competitor | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Tweet about your product to the followers of your competitor

targetcompetitor.com

2 pointscod3boy10 comments

This may be legal but it certainly isn't ethical. Companies that use your service will likely suffer brand damage as a consequence.

I thought of like a version of cold emailing but more targetted. Just a little hack to get users. Not sure if this isn't ethical. But I am open to shutting it down if everyone thinks it's not ethical :) This isn't our primary product, just stumbled on the idea while I was exploring growth tactics.

Twitter has a new policy that states if you're blocked by a small number of people in a short space of time then your account will be shadow-banned (you can tweet but it won't show up in people's timelines). This is probably a quick and easy way to get caught out by that.

Quick fix: create new account that will check if tweets are visible to that user.

Yes! :D

If your marketing strategy involves throwaway Twitter accounts (or spamming strangers via Twitter), you’re doing it - for any definition of “it” - wrong. Come up with something better; it’s not hard.

Thanks, this is something real quick the team did in a day for our internal use. This is more like Ask HN, I am open to ideas and thoughts to do it better :)

You obviously do not work in marketing.

Or I do but I’ve read and agree with http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/01/permission-m... (and the book, short though it is) and other experts. Godin says it perfectly:

> … the new power of the best consumers to ignore marketing. It realizes that treating people with respect is the best way to earn their attention.

Basically, a marketer trying to force their stuff on people - interruption marketing - either doesn’t understand their value proposition well enough to spot ways that it can actually help customers, or is too lazy to act on those ideas.

Thanks, will take care of that.

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