I’ve been on Twitter for some time, but I’m just now starting to realize the power that it has to promote a business.
What I’m learning is that most of the power is in the Twitter tools. Just having an account and posting a few tweets a day isn’t going to do much for you, but it is the place to start to get your feet wet.
Yesterday I heard about a cool tool that automatically selects a random winner from among multiple retweets. Here’s how it works.
You make up a tweet that includes an offer. In my case, it was: “Need a professional press release for your biz? I’m giving 1 away valued at $340 on 7/10. Just RT this message!”
After posting this, I immediately received two retweets. But that was it. Hmmm. I was hoping it would go viral and I would get thousands! But no.
So, I sent it out again. Got a few more. But I realized that I needed a more systematic approach.
Then I went to Tweetlater.com and set up an account under the trial professional version (you get six days for free under the professional version). There I could schedule various versions of the tweet to automatically publish on a recurring basis.
The reason for changing the tweets slightly is because Twitter frowns on issuing multiple identical tweets, treating them as spam, and may block or take down your account if you are excessive. I developed six versions of the message, careful to keep a core part of the phrase the same, then set them up to republish once a day at various times over the next six days.
Voilà! This morning I had a bunch of new retweets waiting for me!
Now here’s the cool part. Next Friday, when I’m ready to award the prize, all I have to do is go to Tweetaways.com, get and reenter a Tweetaways “key” via direct message, enter my Twitter username and enter a “qualifying phrase,” which is why I made sure that I did not change the core part of my tweets when I loaded different versions of the tweet.
When you click on the button, Tweetaways sorts out any duplicates, automatically selects the winner and posts the winner into your twitter stream as an @reply and as DM to you! This keeps the contest fair and square, removing any possible bias on your part, should anyone challenge the outcome.
Cool, huh?
So what can you give away to draw attention to your business?
P.S. If you'd like to enter the contest, go follow me on Twitter @thebuzzfactory and find my tweets!
No related posts.
