Last week I was innocently scrolling through my Twitter feed, chatting with friends, when I got a mention from someone I didn’t know. I checked to see if I was following them or if they were following me - I wasn’t and they weren’t.

It’s not all that unusual to get a tweet from someone who isn’t following me. All you have to do is mention one of approximately one million keywords for spammers and you’ll be inundated with tweets within seconds. But this tweet was different. It wasn’t from a traditional spammer - this was a real person claiming to be participating in a sponsored campaign. I say “claiming” because I can’t verify that the campaign is legitimate. The same day I noticed that I had been followed by someone else who was clearly involved in the same campaign. Similar tweets, hashtags and promotion - same brand.

I see three problems with this campaign:

The brand has no social media presence. I have searched Twitter and Facebook - the two most important for this kind of brand. Nothing. How is anyone supposed to interact with them?

The brand’s intent is unclear. Well, unclear outside of the obvious intent of trying to raise awareness, increase traffic to their site, and gain customers. How does a campaign for a brand that has no presence gain traction? What is the ultimate goal for that channel?The biggest problem with this campaign?

The brand isn’t engaging users directly or through representatives. Last week I talked about engagement versus broadcast. What these individuals are tweeting on behalf of the brand is a sales pitch that’s in your face. No “Hi, how are you!?” No “What can I do for you?” No effort to get to know the people they target with their tweets (that I’ve seen).

I can’t figure out the benefit to running a campaign on a social network without having an actual presence. It leads to confusion and could potentially cause problems with brand reputation.

What advice would you give to the brand in question?