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Twitter Campaign Ideas

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I had the privilege of presenting with Andrew Catapano of mywebWOW!com this morning at the Short North Business Association’s Educational Seminar series.  We had a small but engaged crowd.  They had lots of good questions.

I was going over the four Cs of successful online marketing – Content, Conversation, Community, and Commerce, but what is apparently burning in everyone’s minds is Twitter.  And more specifically, they were hungry for a nitty-gritty take-me-by-the-hand-and-show-me-a-strategy session on Twitter.  Well, I wasn’t quite prepared for that much detail but I’ve thought about their questions today and maybe this will give others struggling with those same issue some ideas.

So, in response to Joe Spinelli of Spinelli’s Deli, who very bluntly said a) I don’t know what to tweet about; and 2) just tweeting about sandwiches and the specials of the day is boring;

here are some possible Twitter campaign ideas.

1)       At the restaurant, have a laptop computer set up and encourage patrons to go over and tweet about coming in for lunch/dinner.  Make sure they mention your @Twittername.  Every 20th Tweet mention (or 50th or whatever number feels right for your crowd) gets a Free Dessert, or free cup of coffee, or free appetizer – some type of reward.  Promote it on Twitter (but not on Facebook or LinkedIn – make it a Twitter exclusive).  Have signs in your restaurant window.  Have the wait staff encourage Tweets.  As they are leaving, ask if they would Tweet about their good experience.  Someone would have to be checking Hootsuite or other application regularly to count the number of mentions, but it’s an easy type of campaign to measure.  Then, announce every winner with a Tweet that mentions their @Twittername.  Do this once a week.  The more you do it, the more reaction you will get.

2)      At the art gallery, promote an “Artist Answers Questions” event where the Artist responds to questions that have been sent in via Twitter.  Again, have a computer on hand so anyone who is in the gallery live still has to submit their question via Twitter to get it answered.  Promote it on Twitter to your community and to the Artist’s community and to any art-related groups for 10 days to two weeks prior to the event.  Start collecting the questions.  At the end of the event, send Tweets thanking everyone who participated and mentioning their @Twittername.  Maybe award virtual prizes for “best question” “funniest question” or “best stumper question.”

3)      For any kind of business, offer a discount or reward to anyone who calls the office or comes into the store and asks for “Larry.”  Only promote it on Twitter.  It could be anything of value.  Maybe a 25% discount for mentioning “Larry.”  They have to spend money to get the discount, so that’s good.  Or a $10 Visa gift card.  They have to give you their name, address, and email address in order to claim their prize.  That’s good, too.  And then, of course, you would send Tweets announcing everyone who “earned” a prize.   For a twist, maybe announce on Twitter that everyone who appears at X location at 6:00 p.m. with a nametag on that says “Larry” will be entered into a drawing for $200.  Do this for a week to 10 days and see what kind of reaction you get. 

4)      Choose a charity, like Operation Feed or the MDA Walk/Run, or Race for a Cure.  Send Tweets encouraging your followers to come to your location to drop off food, or sign up to sponsor a racer.  Offer a Buy One Meal/Get One Meal Free with every donation of 5 cans.  Again, every time someone drops off a can or signs up as a sponsor, mention them in a Tweet.  Make it a Twitter exclusive campaign and see what happens.  Do a different charity every quarter, or maybe even every month.

5)      Have a “We Love our Customers” Tweet day.  Promote that you are going to thank all your customers starting at 9:00 a.m. on X day.  Get as many of your customer’s @Twitternames as you can and on the appointed day, send out Tweets praising and thanking your customers for their business.  Send the Thank You Tweets continuously for 24 hours. Track how many times those Tweets get retweeted.  Wouldn’t you want to do business with a company that publicly thanked its customers?   Other people will want to, too. Do this once a quarter. 

These are just ideas that came to me this afternoon.  Depending on your target audience, there are so many creative, imaginative ways you can a) use Twitter Content to b) create Conversation to c) encourage your Community to d) increase your Commerce (the 4 Cs of social media success).

I would love to hear about your Twitter campaign ideas or stories about Twitter campaigns that worked or ones that flopped.  Leave your comments below.

Here’s to your success,

Trina

P.S.  It’s not exactly the same presentation, but I’ll be speaking on a similar topic at next week’s Abundance Marketing Series.  I’m going to be reviewing strategies on how to better manage your online content (hhmm, let me see, could one of those strategies be to hire me to write your blog, articles and press releases?).  I’d love to see you there.

RSVP at http://abundancemarketingpro.eventbrite.com

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