#squarespace. #moonfruit. #eWayDirect. Hash tag contests are sweeping Twitter in the past few months. You no doubt have hard of the first two, and eWayDirect is starting one today. The details of the eWayDirect promotion can be found here. The basics are that you tweet an elevator pitch for eWayDirect and the winner with the best pitch gets a MacBook. You can also win one of five Flip HD cameras if you blog about the contest (yup, I’m now entered into the contest).
So, here is the big question. As a marketing tactic, are these effective? I’ll admit that I, above anyone, love free stuff. You put the word free out there, I’m coming. You put the word MacBook out there, I’m interested. You put them side by side, hide the children. So, what does all this buzz do for your company? Basically, it builds brand recognition. I had never heard of moonfruit prior to their promotion, and after it, I actually started a trial on their website. It wasn’t for me, but they got me there.
Here’s the key difference between the first two and eWayDirect’s though, they are both targeted towards the everyday joe on the internet, whereas eWayDirect is going after businesses, probably small businesses. Can this still be effective when the everyday internet user doesn’t care about eMarketing services? Personally, I think it can. Twitter has quite a few small business users on it and, if the promotion can pick up speed, then there’s sure to be a number of people who catch wind of it and are interested in doing business with eWayDirect. On top of this, there is no cost of running the contest apart from the laptop and cameras, which is around $2,000. So, basically, if they get ONE new client from the promotion, they’ve already earned back their expenses.
What I really like about the promotion is that it forces it’s participants to learn about the company and it’s services in order to have a shot at winning. So, not only are they getting name recognition, but getting the word out about their services.
So, what do you think? Are these promotions effective? Are you going to participate? Am I going to win? 
Are these in the same vein as sponsored tweets and blog posts online? Sound off in the comments section below…
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Hey Jackie,
Thanks again for posting about our contest. We wanted to do something to get help with our pitch, get our name out and reward people for helping that was fun (hopefully) and relevant to our business. I have no idea what kind of results we’ll see over the week, but it will be interesting to hear what people come up with.
-Jason
eWayDirect
I like the idea of the contests (as you said, free + Macbook equals hide children, by the by hilarious description) but at the same token I think you need to be very careful.
I also joined the moofruit one, cause I am intrigued by free electronics…however after “following” them on Twitter the inundation of contest tweets clogged my feed and I eventually ended up unfollowing them. Which is unfortunate, cause I was very much interested in the services their company used. Perhaps I’m just one person and everyone else has much more patience than I (quite possible!) but that’s what I now associate with #hashtag contests.
That’s an interesting point Elisa. I’d definitely agree that businesses should be careful not to abuse the new follows they get from the contest. #ewaydirect has been pretty good about avoiding that and continuing to provide pretty relevant tweets. But to answer your last sentence, you’re not the only one, I’m with ya!