Twitter Tip - The Secrets Are Hidden Right In Front Of You

Hi,

Time for a rare ExRat thread.

I was just commenting on another thread that was discussing something, and it became apparent that many people miss the real 'secrets' because they're either -

a) not paying enough attention

b) not in the right frame of mind

c) not expecting to be able to find 'secrets' so easily, possibly because they are conditioned to paying for them

I don't really like using the word secrets, but that's the whole point. Many people are missing a trick, therefore that's what they become.

To the point -

If you get a new follower on twitter and you have the email alerts set up and you click through to see what the person is all about, like me, you probably scan the page that you arrive at and see what they have been saying.

As well as seeing their 'broadcast' tweets, you will also see their @tweets where they have responded directly to someone. Therefore you will probably look at WHO the tweet was sent to, particularly if the tweet itself OR the name of the person is interesting/eye-catching.

In the other thread, it was being discussed that namecheap (a domain registrar) were giving promo space on their home page to their new twitter ID.

It was also mentioned that they had been running a competition on twitter.

What was clever about this was -

a) the competition started again every hour - IE - someone won every hour

b) in order to win, you needed to answer a question (by sending a tweet), then the winner was 'drawn' from all the correct answers

(Is it clicking yet?)

Therefore, they can have thousands of people tweeting them every hour trying to win the prize. If you do the maths, 1000s of people tweeting a name multiplied by many more thousands who see that name in someone elses tweet list is a lot of almost free exposure.

Now let's take this further.

1) make sure that your twitter profile name is as enticing as possible. For example, you could create a new twitter profile called '$100_FREE_EVERY_HOUR' or something along those lines.

2) make sure to use extremely enticing answers to the questions - for example, if there was a phrase or headline in the news, that was very powerful or amusing - EG -

Obama Caught Eating Pickled Onions

Let's say we were scanning the news and let's say The New York Times (just an example) had that ridiculous headline on the front page of their online news portal.

You create a question around the headline, in order to get attention.
So for example, the question could be -

'Tell us the exact headline that is on today's New York Times online news site, which relates to a president to be, and a type of food. Make sure to send the answer in all CAPS in order to win.'

Bingo.

3) Use (and test) whatever methods you can. For example, instead of caps you could tell them that the answer must be inside asterix's like this - *ANSWER*

4) the better the prizes you offer, the more exposure you get (exponentially)

5) every different aspect of this that you can leverage, leads to exponential gains because it is viral - EG - if today you find a much more compelling answer to the question, and you increase the prize fund, your exposure will go through the roof because this is a 'free' viral method.

If one person sees it and tweets about it, and more than one person sees that tweet - you are going viral.

If EVERYONE ends up talking about the fact that most of the profiles they have seen that day have 'Obama Caught Eating Pickled Onions' mentioned somewhere, then they are going to be tweeting each other saying, "what's with all of this pickled onion Obama stuff from XYZ company?'

So you get EVEN MORE exposure to your brand.

You probably WILL end up being hated as a cheap exposure-whore who people are sick of seeing, but if you know anything about buzz, you will know that it's usually a price worth paying to stamp your brand in peoples' minds as a thought-leader.

Any thoughts or additions to this idea that could get even more exposure out of it?