How to Run a Contest Using Twitter

Jeremy Schoemaker of Shoemoney.com is running a contest. You can win a Flip MinoHD and MacBook AIR. The great thing about this contest is how he’s running it as well as the cool Shoemoney logo on the Flip MinoHD.

First, Shoemoney is a highly respected Internet Marketer, so that’s important here but nevertheless what he’s doing with his contest is wonderful.

On his blog post Twitter Flip Mino HD & MacBook AIR Giveaway he outlines how you can win the Fip Mino HD with the following outline:

Follow @shoemoney on twitter.
Simply tweet “Just entered to win a flip minoHD. Just follow @shoemoneyand retweet. http://xr.comfliphd”

This is brilliant. If you’re a Seth Godin follower or know of the whole “sneezing”, “sneezers” and “viral” marketing stuff, this is it in action.

If you’re on twitter and you have a huge following like Shoemoney does, those are his sneezers. What does he get out of this?

First – His twitter followers skyrocket because the first step of the contest is to follow him on twitter.

Now, you might be someone who’s on the fence about twitter and just think it’s some Instant Messaging system to screw around on, but while it can be addictive there are plenty of ways to control yourself and how to use twitter effectively. Subscribe to my blog and we’ll talk about it in future articles.

Second – People visit his blog post about how to win a Flip MinoHD, what it looks like, and plain old curiosity.

This steps brings people to his blog which will in turn, gain new readers and subscribers to his blog, and maybe those new readers and subscriber will even buy his SEO (Search Engine Optimization)/marketing tools. Are you seeing the (Internet Marketing) light?

Third – You retweet step #2 telling (“sneezing”) everyone about the competition and what you can win which drives you with the URL to his blog post about it. Nice.

Remember, Shoemoney has a bunch of followers, who have a bunch of followers, who have a bunch followers, and on and on and on. Are you hearing all that sneezing yet? And for what? FREE!! Jeremy sits back and let’s his “sneezers” do all the marketing for him. You gotta love it!!

Tracking on Twitter

To track your tweets like this for a contest you can use retweetradar or issue the command “retweetradar shoemoney” at search.twitter.com. Of course, Shoemoney and his mad programming skills whipped together a page to track the competition – Shoemoney Viral Twitter Contest.

How do you find the sneezers? Do you think that offering people discounts will help you get at the sneezers?

Actually, I think the sneezers find you. They find you because you hang out where they hang out. If you’re launching a product that doesn’t have a natural hive of sneezers, that’s really hard, but generally you’re clever enough to find the right nexus. Starbucks didn’t open the first shops in rural South Dakota, even though storefronts are cheap there. Apple opens their stores using similar thinking. Software guys realize that a post to Slashdot is worth more than ten ads in Time magazine…

Seth Godin

Also, don’t forget another contest he’s got going on – I’m Giving Away A New Intel Core i7!

Hope this sneezer wins.