There’s something to be said about being enthusiastic with your social media endeavors. It’s great when companies embrace this relatively new form of marketing, because so many companies have yet to realize the true value that such channels are able to provide. However, there are also many companies that are not quite going about it in the right way.

Take Tassimo Canada as a prime example. They appear to be perfectly well-intentioned with their marketing efforts, reaching out to Canadians to help promote the new home-based coffee brewing system. In fact, they’re so enthusiastic that the company is literally giving out hundreds of machines for free. That’s the good news and it flexes a lot of marketing muscle.

The bad news is how they’re doing it. Take a look at this screenshot. What’s wrong with that image? Even though this appears to the legitimate Twitter profile for Tassimo Canada, there is a sea of messages to specific Twitter users that is literally a copy-and-paste affair. It looks like spam. It looks like a junk account. At the end of the day, it looks illegitimate and Tassimo Canada runs the risk of being flagged as spam.

Why would they reach out to all these Twitter users in this fashion? They’re trying to get them to follow the Tassimo Canada Twitter account so they can send a direct message, asking if the Twitter user would like to receive a complimentary coffee machine. It started out with good intentions, but the end result could be counterproductive. Be careful with how you use social media.