How not to use Twitter: HabitatUK as a case study:

Habitat fetched up on Twitter a few days ago and promptly made a complete hash of the effort. In a mind boggling Twitter Fail they used trending topic hashtags to draw attention to their tweets. Hashtags that had nothing to do with furniture,decorating or indeed shopping for the most part.
Top hasgtags at the time included #iPhone #mms #Apple and various tags for the Iranian elections.
This clear attempt at Twitter Spam quickly enraged the Twitter community and caused a flurry of responses aimed back at @HabitatUK, who quickly deleted their offending Tweets, replacing them with less contentious generic product sales links. But the offending tweets live on thanks to the Twitter search cache.
The damage has been done though. The brand has been soiled.

What should they have done to redeem themselves?
Socialmedia Today has the right idea.

“So what could HabitatUK have done instead?

1. Individually @replied everyone who complained to them publicly, and apologised for the spammy behaviour
2. Apologised in public. They could have sent out generic tweets to say sorry for not knowing what they were doing when they hijacked the trending hashtags for their marketing tweets
3. Given Twitter followers a special offer discount voucher that could be redeemed via the web.
4. Asked Twitter followers what kind of information/offers HabitatUK could offer, that would give value and build interest.
5. Its ok to fail. Do it quickly and apologise publicly. People are a lot more forgiving when you admit to your mistakes rather than deny any wrongdoing.

The way the @HabitatUK page looks now, is typical of a traditional, push marketing, corporate PR approach. Admit nothing, apologise for nothing, do not engage in conversation, advertise, advertise, advertise. You have to wonder why they’re even bothering being on Twitter in the first place.”