The “Sneezing” Result
Your twitter followers will retweet to their followers, and those followers will retweet to their followers, and so on.
Are you hearing all that sneezing yet? Your “sneezers” are helping you with your marketing.
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…
That’s it. Now start sneezing. If you hold a twitter contest, let us know about it in the comments below and how it went. And make sure the prize is the best you can possibly give away. You got a make it juicy for people to respond.
After the contest is over, follow thru by providing the best and fastest delivery of the prize. Ask the winner to tweet that they received the prize and who it’s from. Usually, they follow through when it’s something that is real, great, and trustworthy.
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
FYI your link to retweetradar links to “retreatrader.com” instead.
No Debt Plan’s last blog post..State Tax Refund Delays
@No Debt Plan – DOH!! Thanks. I guess retreats were on my mind.
Thanks for the information Bill. I wondered how this type of marketing could be so successful and you outlined it nicely.
Hey great writeup. While we've yet to have a contest or giveaway of the Shoemoney size, Tweets Win http://www.tweetswin.com has hosted over 85 contest or giveaways so far. Tweets Win is a free service that has a following that's slowly growing. Each twitter contest run can get itself in front of thousands of people instantly.
My site's still in it's early beta stages, I'm still gathering feedback and would love to hear any thoughts.
Be sure to check out http://www.tweetswin.com/ if you want to find or submit your own Twitter Contest! It's free!
Hey great writeup. While we've yet to have a contest or giveaway of the Shoemoney size, Tweets Win http://www.tweetswin.com has hosted over 85 contest or giveaways so far. Tweets Win is a free service that has a following that's slowly growing. Each twitter contest run can get itself in front of thousands of people instantly.
My site's still in it's early beta stages, I'm still gathering feedback and would love to hear any thoughts.
Be sure to check out http://www.tweetswin.com/ if you want to find or submit your own Twitter Contest! It's free!
Thanks for this. I was looking for a way to run a contest on twitter. This helps a lot.
Thanks for the helpful advice. We have a couple of contests pending/ in planning for clients and have been a little concerned by the apparent simplicity of doing it. Seems it is that simple though…
Wonder of anyone here has any thought on woobox.com as we are thinking of doing it that way?
B2B Technology Marketing: Thanks for stoppin’ by. I have not heard of woobox.com, I’ll have to check it out. Good luck with your contest.
Great advice, thank you! I’m planning a competition on my blog and thought about how to include a viral element in it.
Thanks for stoppin’ by Lorenz and good luck with your competition.
Nice Advice…. Im about to launch a competition to generate more followers. Thanks for your tip regarding Bit.ly service that allows you to create a special link and track your blog post or website page which describes your contest. my link here
the bit.ly piece was really helpful! i never thought to look into that. figured it was just like a tiny.url or whatever. but i’m stoked to know they offer stats to help track a contest like this.
i was actually just thinking of running a facebook contest that would lead to a free wufoo.com form instead of just “hey like my page”. then you could have contestants enter their email for a chance to win, and choose any of 2 or 3 prizes. then it’s more interactive and potentially appealing to more people. maybe i could run this thru twitter to gain followers. i like this form idea to capture emails for future use as a mailing list. then it’d be easier to build momentum for contests or new product launches in the future and they’d grow faster, instead of having to generate all that buzz again from scratch…
i’ll be using another form to get people involved in helping me make my final decision on the name and potential price point for a new product idea.
what i’d really like to learn how to do is something like this:
click here to help name our store and enter for your chance to win free product x (or whatever the offer).
next, share this on facebook and/or twitter to earn more chances to win! everyone that clicks thru from your tweet gets you another entry in the drawing!
i’m looking into whether bit.ly can do that for me, or if that would have to be coded by a pro…
twitter is probably faster and easier, but does anybody have experience or any idea on how to do this with facebook? like how to track who shares and re-shares a post about your contest, vs just ‘liking’ your biz or fan page?
thanks everyone! and thanks bill, for the blog! super helpful!
Great tips, i put a landing page together for a contest yesterday using the @anywhere tweet box which makes things easier ^^
Hi, we’ve created a tool to automate twitter competitions and generate a easy to use widget to use in your site or blog. You can create campaigns for a specific time frame. Try it and let me know if you like it. Thank you.
Thanks for the great post. I was looking all around for help. GLAD i found you!
Thank you for this informative and easy to read guide to getting more twitter followers. This article was not only helpful but it is a great reference! A lot of people know who to use twitter in the most basic sense, however after they read this list they should be on their ways to becoming experts on how to get more followers.Thank you!