Jul
12
Twitter for Prizes and Profit
12 Days of Twitter :: Day 11
(What the heck are the 12 days of Twitter?)
There’s been a lot of controversy lately about Twitter spam. I’ve already talked about the kind that we don’t have to want. The kind you can get rid of by unfollowing or blocking. Tonight though, I’m writing about something that many people might argue isn’t spam at all. It’s stuff in the gray area, and if it isn’t spam, at the very least, it’s Twitter pollution. You’ve seen it. It’s everywhere. Companies create a contest that encourages people to tweet with a branded hashtag. I’m a capitalist. I’m all about free speech, so I think if a company wants to do that, they should have the right to do it, but my hope is that the Twitter community will say no by not participating.
Twitter is a great place for community, and communities are a great place to do giveaways to promote a product or service. Giveaways are fun for community members, and get lots of attention for companies. If you spend more than five minutes a day on Twitter, I’m guessing you’ve seen multiple tweets with #squarespace and #moonfruit in them lately. The tweets have absolutely nothing to do with the companies Square Space or Moonfruit, though. The included hashtag is purely an effort to enter a contest put on by those companies to win something, and the rules typically specify that you can tweet about anything you want, as long as you include the branded hashtag.
In full disclosure, Square Space is coming on board as a new sponsor of GeekBrief.TV. While I like the service they provide, I don’t agree with any company using hashtag spam to create interest in a contest. If you’re one of the people who doesn’t think it’s specifically spam, I think you’ll agree that it does add clutter and confusion.
Now, I want to be clear on something. I love giveaways! I love the use of Twitter for giveaways. I just think there’s a better way.
I’ve use a service called TwitRand to do giveaways. I let everyone know I’ll be doing a giveaway in the next month (or whatever the time frame is … usually a Drobo). They have to be following me in order to enter, then I let TwitRand randomly pick a follower. I have nothing to do with the outcome, so I can’t be biased in picking a winner, and I don’t have to do any extra work in collecting information from the contest entries. It’s much cleaner and much simpler.
The downside to this option is it doesn’t get people involved. There are ways to get people involved that doesn’t clutter up the space, though. You could ask a trivia question, you could ask people to comment on something and pick the funniest response. You can also use TwitRand to pick a random person that has retweeted a particular phrase or keyword. There are many options that encourage your followers to be active without cluttering up Twitter and confusing people who aren’t clued into what’s going on.
When you’re building a business, the only thing that really matters is your reputation. MoonFuit and SquareSpace are good companies. Their Twitter spam damages them more than it helps. On Twitter, you want your message to be who you really are. Companies will always offer you incentives to be something different, but no amount of money is worth adding and abeding the twitter spammers.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on contests and Twitter. Leave a comment below!
Read More
Introduction to the 12 Days of Twitter
Day 1: The Secret Code: What are all those initials and symbols?
Day 2: Use TweetDeck to Manage Conversations
Day 3: Share Your Funny Anecdotes While They’re Still Funny
Day 4: Follow Responsibly
Day 5: 3 Newbie Mistakes Made by New Tweeters
Day 6: Use Twitter Search to Connect and Find
Day 7: Twitter Mobile
Day 8: Five Awesome Things You Can Do with Twitter
Day 9: Mix It Up!
Day 10: If You’re Not a TweetDeck, You Might Be a Seesmic
Day 12: Schedule Tweets in Advance
