As noted, URLs visible in the posts didn t point to any credible domains or sites linked to Starbucks. Users were invited to share the come-on via Facebook in order to further spread the hoax,… Meet Starbucks for Life Sweepstakes Winners. January 12, 2016. . 2 min read. With the Starbucks for Life sweepstakes wrapping up yesterday January 11 , winners of a free beverage or food item every day for the next 30 years are taking stock of their good fortune. For the second consecutive year, Starbucks has presented the sweepstakes. Enter your email address to subscribe to Free Stuff Times Contests and receive notifications of new posts by email. Subscribe daily, weekly, or for each new post. Starbucks scam targets coffee chain consumers How to protect yourself. The auto-reload function on Starbucks gift cards has opened the door for criminals to steal up to thousands of dollars from … So, it makes sense that an old Starbucks hack involving water, ice, matcha powder, and steely, unwavering confidence, would resurface during this, the Summer of Scam. Over on the Starbucks … Our national motto, E Pluribus Unum, means Out of Many, One. But WMDs reverse the equation. Working in darkness, they carve one into many, while hiding us from the harms they inflict upon our neighbors near and far. And those harms are legion. They unfold when a single mother can t arrange child care fast enough to adapt to her work schedule, or when a struggling young person is red-lighted for an hourly job by a workplace personality test. We see them when a poor minority teenager gets stopped, roughed up, and put on warning by the local police, or when a gas station attendant who lives in a poor zip code gets hit with a higher insurance bill. It s a silent war that hits the poor hardest but also hammers the middle class. Its victims, for the most part, lack economic power, access to lawyers, or well-funded political organizations to fight their battles. The result is widespread damage that all too often passes for inevitability. It s common etiquette to remove scheduled marketing tweets in the face of a tragedy or a catastrophic event so as not to seem insensitive. A brand that uses a tragic event to promote or sell is seen as newsjacking and it might create a backlash. For example, if you manufacture umbrellas, it would be bad form to schedule a tweet offering to sell umbrellas during a hurricane. Do answer questions and respond to comments. If folks are reaching out to you on Twitter, it s a good thing. It means they re putting their faith in you and find you accessible. Make sure to check Twitter throughout the day for questions and comments so that you can address everything in a timely manner. Don t ignore a tweet because you don t want to draw light to negativity. All feedback is good feedback, even the bad stuff. Answer questions even if they relate to a negative experience, especially because people are watching. If you d rather not talk about such things with so many people in attendance, invite the tweeter to take it offline with a phone call or email. Do share links to your stuff. Have a great promotion? Share the link! Did you write a great blog post? Share the link! Does someone else have something cool to promote? Share the link! After all, if you re using Twitter as a promotional tool, you re looking for a result for your ultimate goal, a goal that you can t meet without the link. Don t let all our warnings about spamming make you afraid to share. Don t only drop links. If your Twitter stream is nothing but links and self-promotional spamminess, you ll drive everyone away. Make sure that links are a small percentage of what you share on Twitter. Do share links to other people s stuff. Social networks aren t only about you. Highlight other people s achievements, and they ll be more likely to highlight yours. Remember, though, a you scratch my back, and I ll scratch yours mentality gets a bit old. Don t share or retweet a link unless you know what it s about. Have you ever seen a popular tweeter share a link and instantaneously receive hundreds of retweets in return? It s a good bet many of those retweeters didn t even click the link to read what it s all about. Blind faith is cool and all, but what if the tweeter was linking to a post that is a lie or something offensive or inappropriate? A retweet is an endorsement, and it s in the best interests of your brand to know exactly what you re putting out there. Do tweet every day. Consistency is key to social media success. Put yourself out there every day so that you re a visible presence. When folks know when to expect your tweet, it s a good thing. Don t let your Twitter account become a ghost town. People feel better knowing that their favorite brands are socially engaged. When they look up a brand on Twitter and there haven t been any tweets since 2014, it tells everyone the brand isn t interested in what their community thinks. Do take conversations private. Not everything has to be out in the open. Nothing is wrong with offering to take an in-depth conversation offline or private. Sometimes, a one-on-one conversation best because you don t want to exclude everyone else in your stream. Also, if you re dealing with a negative situation, there s little you can resolve in 140 characters, so taking the conversation private is the way to go. Don t auto-DM. Avoid sending auto private or direct messages DMs , as shown in Figure 1-4 . Some apps instantaneously send thank you or follow this link private messages as soon as someone follows you. Auto-DMs and spam DMs are a sure way to receive an immediate unfollow. DMs are considered a private area, and most tweeters don t want their privacy invaded. Do talk about yourself and your brand. You re going to hear and read a lot about how social networks aren t for self-promotion and how it s all about the conversation, and that s true. However, it s silly to think that you re spending all your time on Twitter or Facebook and can t even promote your brand. Don t talk only about yourself and your brand. It s all about balance. Go ahead and promote your stuff, but make sure that you have a good ratio of conversational tweets versus promotional tweets. Different experts have a good idea of what that ratio should be, but usually trial and error determine what works best for you. Try tweeting one to two promotional tweets out of every ten tweets. Do find topics of interest. Try introducing a different discussion topic or question to your community each day. See whether you find any news that will interest your niche, or talk about the latest tools and techniques. Find something discussion-worthy and go for it. Don t be corporate and boring. People don t always want to discuss the brand. While they do enjoy some transparency from time to time, you ll lose people if your tweets are all about the corporate shareholder meeting. Do share some company business, but all work and no play will make you a very dull tweeter. Do talk to everyone. If your Twitter account has 2,500 followers, 2,500 people are interested in learning about you or your brand. Of course, you can t reach out to everyone by name every day, but ensuring that many of your daily tweets apply to everyone is almost as good as reaching out to everyone. At times you ll want to reach out to individuals, but you ll lose followers if your Twitter account is a hotbed of exclusivity. Don t reach out to only the big names. Many people feel that if they reach out to the big names on Twitter, they ll receive more attention. When someone with thousands of followers retweets your link or mentions you on social networks, you re bound to get more followers and interest in your brand. However, if you re only reaching out to the big names, it won t be long before you gain a reputation for pandering to famous people. Your biggest advocates aren t the people with a huge following they re the people who use your brand and interact with you every day. Collectively, they can have a bigger reach. www.naymz.com FIGURE 4-6 A basic social media policy may be enough to get you started. It was only seven o clock, but in winter the days are short, if not warm. I went to my room and dressed in the pajamas Big Roy or maybe the church ladies set out for me.