The gambling industry in general and the online gambling industry in particular have always been quite desperate in regards to their marketing. Since proper marketing translates into immediate monetary benefits for the online gambling operator, it's easy to understand why that's the case.

It's safe to assume that the dedicated marketing departments of various online and brick and mortar gambling operators see a marketing-related opportunity in just about everything out there. When social media came along, everyone was quick to jump on the bandwagon, therefore it is safe to say that the online gambling/poker industry was among the first to recognize the potential promotional value of the various new social media platforms.

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Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and yes, in the beginning even Myspace, were quickly inundated with online gaming spam gleefully disseminated by the marketing employees of various brands. Already endowed with certain immunity to this sort of advertising and properly outraged by the audacity of the new practices, social media users were just as quick to ignore/become immune to their efforts.

Every brand had to have a social media presence, but the actual results – in terms of new, active real money players signed up – were disappointing at best. Properly engaging people/would be customers through social media is a piece of cake really, until someone tries to sell them something, especially as stigma-ridden as online gambling.

These days, it is recognized that social media advertising campaigns without the right kind of substance (we'll go into just what that is below) ends up generating extremely low-value traffic. Attracting gawkers is one thing…driving motivated people ready to spend money is quite another.

Does this mean that social media-based promotion is dead for online gambling operators? Well for those without the material means to put value into actual promotions that will offer players real value, it certainly is.

One way to perform effective and successful social media promotion is through promotions and contest specially geared towards the social media followers of the operation. Again, it is extremely important that these promos carry some good real-money value, otherwise they'll fail to capture the attention of potential clients. Everything else is a waste of time and annoyance for social media users. Brand loyalty is a precious commodity online and it is definitely not built by pestering people but by investing serious money into the effort in creative ways.

The bottom line: yes, social media can be a potent promotion tool, but it's essentially a mouth-piece for those who have something to say (or in this case pay). Just using it to shout all sorts of meaningless offers at people will simply not cut it in this day and age.