Update: I will announce the winners here and also in the Feb shoemoney newsletter. So far each person we have picked has not responded to our direct messages. We are giving them 24 hours to respond. We have gone through 6 so far. Will post here and make a twitter announcement when winners are found.

Why do a Twitter contest?

Why do a Twitter contest? Well before I answer that question, let’s back up for a minute. Since I started using Twitter, I’ve determined that it’s a tremendous tool. In fact, I’ve even went as far as to say that I believe Twitter is the biggest communication tool since e-mail. I’ve often used Twitter in order to connect and network with other people and companies, seeing if one of my followers knows another person at a particular company or something to that affect. More often than not, I find out the information I’m looking for – if not immediately.

Since using Twitter and becoming more interested in other people’s experiences with it, I’ve spoke with some of my good friends including Neil Patel, Chris Winfield, and even some people we met at blogworld from Southwest Airlines to see how they ”value” Twitter followers. Essentially, everyone gave me the same sort of response – each Twitter follower is worth about two dollars (that is what companies are evaluating each follower).

Honestly, I think that sort of valuation is actually somewhat low. When it comes to Twitter, I often see a much better click-through-ratio for my followers than I do from my RSS subscribers (about 8 times better to be exact!). Since I’ve always valued RSS subscribers at about one dollar per subscriber, you can understand why I believe Twitter followers are worth more. (I know it sounds crappy to put a dollar value on a human, but in the end you need to put some sort of value on these things. If you don’t, you can never truly measure your effectiveness or ROI.)

After talking to my friends and nailing down an estimated value for each Twitter follower, I brainstormed a list of prizes (reasonably priced) that I thought people would be interested in. I then chatted with my friend Kris Jones (the owner of Pepperjam Affiliate Network) about sponsoring these prizes for something I called my “Twitter contest.” He thought it was a great idea and said they were down. Once I got the thumbs up from him and had the prizes locked down, I was ready to have my contest. The ultimate goal would be for me to gain more Twitter followers while also providing a new follower with the chance to win a pretty cool prize. (Sounds fun and it costs me basically nothing.)

So was my Twitter contest successful?

Although I didn’t hit my goal of adding 10,000 new followers, I did gain over 6,000 followers in the first 21 days of the contest. And while I don’t believe it was the most successful viral Twitter contest ever, I believe it definitely provides a great blueprint for future viral Twitter campaigns and is the most successful one to date. I have no doubt people will either blame me or give me credit for pioneering the first successful viral Twitter contest. (Many people have tried before but failed miserably. Even I failed before on my first attempt at having a Twitter contest.)

Do you think a bunch of people will unfollow you today now that the contest is over?

I would expect so but we will know soon enough.

Do you feel bad about spamming Twitter?

This is something that bothered me a bit; people said I was spamming Twitter. Really? You only see the messages from people you’re following (which you opted into). If those people wanted to tweet it and you have chosen to receive their messages, how is that spamming? So no, I don’t feel bad about spamming Twitter – because I never did spam Twitter.

Why did you use http://xr.com/fliphd (a framed page) and not your own site directly?

Everything I do is examined under a microscope by everyone from Search Engine Optimization “experts” to Search Engine Engineers. And with good reason. As I have said before, I do not like 90% of “SEO Professionals”. Most of them are all smoke and mirrors. These people, however, have mob power. They would have every page on Sphinn describing how I was manipulating SERP rankings by demanding people link to me. In order to avoid this very situation, I had people link to the xr.com page which used a frame set and gives me ZERO SEO value (but still sends me traffic because the xr.com domain ranks so well… it urrently ranks #3 in google for fliphd). So I get both benefits… (until the SEO’s whine about this).

What about the haters?

As you may know, I try new things and tactics all the time… and a lot of people seem to notice them.  Just based on simple law of averages, not everyone is going to like everything that I do. This won’t stop me though. I will still continue to try new things.. and people will be in the wings watching and criticizing. That’s just the way it goes and I’ve come to expect it. No matter what fans or haters say, I respect their opinions and value their feedback.

So now what? Are you going to hold any more Twitter contests?

No. At least not right now. I am traveling to Phoenix in a couple of days. Then I’m headed off to San Francisco for the Elite Retreat February 16 throuh 21. Once my travel schedule slows down, I am sure we will do something in March (especially since I love contests).

Thank you to everyone who participated, tweeted and followed.  In the near future, I will most likely release the script I wrote for the contest along with instructions on how to implement your own viral Twitter campaign.

Thanks – @shoemoney

About the author...

Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2416 posts on ShoeMoney.com.

Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.

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