A few weeks ago I made the mistake of wondering aloud when someone would start offering cash prizes for twitter followers. I had seen people offering physical prizes before, but never cash. A few random people decided to have some fun with me and start saying I was offering cash, so I just decided to run with it.Since this wasn’t a planned event I don’t have the exact numbers but you can see from the graph below I gained about 300 followers
I offered a $100 prize, and gained about 300 followers which is about $0.30 per acquisition. Right now social media gurus and web 2.0 weenies are tearing the temple robes since I’m referring to twitter followers in a commodity sense, but hey deal with it. I did have some drop off after the contest, but nothing significant, and you can see the slope of line adding new followers remained fairly consistent, after the event.
I know some people believe this was all some evil plan that I executed to look like an “accident” but really it wasn’t. I opened my mouth said what I was thinking, the opportunity presented itself and I ran with it. I know there are some people who won’t ever believe me, and that’s cool. However if I had thought about this before hand I would have executed it a little better, here are some of the ways I would have improved it:
- By offering cash I attracted everyone, I would have been better offering something more targeted to my community like a BOTW listing, or SEO Book Membership, or pro SEO Moz account.
- I would have started the offer earlier in the day and on a day when I could devote my time to pimping it. Sure I could just robo-tweet but scheduled tweets are almost always inferior to live tweets
- I would have put up a short message and required people to retweet my name to be entered
- I would have taken out some PPC ads for popular twitter terms and software.
- I would have scheduled some guest posts on popular social media blogs for that day allowing me to saturate the twitterverse with my presence and the contest
Are twitter contests a viable way of gaining followers … absolutely. However you do have to be aware that many social media purists dislike the concept, so it’s not all unicorns and rainbows, be prepared for criticism. If you take the time to plan beforehand and execute a little better chances are you’ll have even better results than I did.
Lastly less someone think this was just a game and I never gave away the prize, here’s a link to the winner @SteveGarfield, who did the right thing and turned the money around and donated it to charity
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{ 14 comments }
What’s the point of the followers anyway if they’re already your site visitors?
@Vygantas there’s not a 100% overlap in RSS to twitter followers, in fact in other industries there’s very little overlap. The tech space has adopted and become intimate with RSS, the general public not so much. Twitter requires much less commitment than RSS. With twitter a lot of people treat it as a stream of conversation jumping in and out when it works for them, and not worrying if they miss anything.
I’ve been having similar thoughts on the subject of how marketers seem to be approaching social media as a marketing platform with little thought to performance metrics and proper perspective in terms of how much time it should really be given compared to other tools in your arsenal. Not to say it should be downplayed off-hand, just that without numbers you are shooting blind, and that’s not a very typical marketing practice (at least it shouldn’t be.) Wrote an article yesterday that gives some ideas on how to break out of that habit: Social Media Marketing: Network Responsibly
I always found Twitter most over-rated site of 2008-2009.
It doesn’t bring any revenue, links are no-follow (as I read), it’s like web IRC, pure waste of time. You get followers which makes you spend more time on Twitter (because your ego grows). As a result, you become obsessed/addicted to site. Most of the people who knows about your twitter did that from your site anyway.
I have found one good thing about twitter though. Before new software version release, developer publishes some news to know ETA, etc.
http://twitter.com/centos
But as you can see, once that guy/girl said: “released…” full waste of time messages appear… So yes, twitter is good for one time use when you are obsessed about something and want as much updates as possible.
I even not sure how following works. Is this like: I follow you = get all your messages?
If so, who would want to get messages like “so, who’s doing the essential screenshot collection?”, “1000th follower! well done.”, who cares anyway?
@Vygantas I think it’s the most underestimated underutilized website of 2008, there’s a huge amount of potential. If you are looking to generate instant links TODAY and instant sales RIGHT NOW … then you’re using it wrong. Social media isn’t about building sales right now it’s about building the relationship so you are involved, and when someone is ready to make the sale you are already there, you don’t need to get your foot in the door you’re already sitting on the couch …
It is no secret that you can buy twitter followers on sites like buyfollowers dot com and twitterpromoter dot com
I think it works!!
Looks like a good trick but here’s a better one: http://tweetergetter.com/
His stats say everything: http://siteanalytics.compete.com/tweetergetter.com/?src=ff-tbplg
His Twitter account: http://twitter.com/garymccaffrey
His Twitter stats: http://twittercounter.com/garymccaffrey/all
“Lastly less someone think this was just a game and I never gave away the prize, here’s a link to the winner @SteveGarfield, who did the right thing and turned the money around and donated it to charity”
If I had won, I would have sent the money to Kevin Rose and say “courtesy Wolf Howl.”
@will bastard
You are such the social whore…. but we love you.
I’m thinking of offering a Cash Prize/reward for business name suggestions via Twitter. Around $300US, what are your thoughts. It is a business using RFID for Social Media. I already have clients my business has just happened so fast i haven’t even had time to come up with a name. I’m also a Director in Sweet Tooth Media, this uses Bluetooth for advertising.
Would love to know your thoughts, follow my progress on twitter SocialMediaMum.
Cheers …Kelly
Try twiveaway.com for contests and giveaways using twitter
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