Dave Peck has an excellent post entitled "Companies just don't understand Twitter," and I absolutely second his opinions.

Over the last two weeks, I've enjoyed my vacation, but I've been checking in on my email and Twitter account occasionally, always to find that someone has started to follow me, even though I haven't really tweeted much for a while. A lot of these new followers are real persons (Hello to all!) who I'll follow back, some are bots that add nothing at best to the conversation, and a few are companies that I have never heard of. Companies, mind you, not people working for companies.

Now, I won't out these companies, just give them a good advice: SEEK HELP! You obviously don't understand the dynamics of Twitter, or the dynamics of social media in general. There are plenty of advisors (my good friends and colleagues at Cohn & Wolfe Digital, among others) who can set you up with monitoring tools, a mindset, and a strategy, which will all help you be able to implement measures yourselves.

Now, where's my beach towel?