I would say that following food brands on Twitter offers no value.

These brands are not responsive enough for when actually does want info, for example, I’m hungry now and want to know where the nearest Wimpy is. Google will 99% of the time give you that info in five seconds while you might wait minutes or even hours for the official brand to respond. The only thing that these brands appear to do is RT tweets that are positive and ignore negative tweets.

Since following food brands offers no value they offer prizes to people in order to gain followers. Many brands and agencies are guilty of this, I too can be blamed for this by allowing a client to do this.

I believe that many ‘average’ people on Twitter and Facebook are happy to follow or become a fan if there is a chance they’ll win or get something. I’ve seen if first hand with competitions I’ve been involved in and seen it with sites like http://www.winstuff.co.za. http://www.winstuff.co.za has an audience on it’s site and Facebook page who’s only purpose is to win things. The people who visit the site daily are more than happy to sign up or provide whatever details are required to enter a competition. I suspect these are the same people who fill out entry forms at the till at the supermarket or garage.

Additionally I see every ad, print, web and project management agency offering ‘social services’. The agencies convince all their clients that they require a social presence in order to cash in on the easy money. They hire a social media ‘expert’ which could be a blogger with a dead-end job or recent student recruit who they pay very little to and then charge the client the cost of this person’s salary for these social media services. Given that these people don’t have enough PR experience or have enough authority to offer any meaningful engagement they’re left to RTing tweets and directing complaints to the client who is qualifies and allowed to engage with complaints.

My point is that this type of engagement offers no value to many people such as yourself it in it’s own mediocre way does work for many others. So if the brand is happy doing this then I don’t see why they shouldn’t. Obviously it’s a missed opportunity but if the brand doesn’t care when let them be.