Last week I ran a 2009 Mother’s Day Contest here at DailyTwiTips and it brought in quite a few readers as well as twitter followers.  My intention was to make it past the 2,000 followers mark as quick as I could and help some folks have a happier Mother’s Day.

For marketing campaigns, twitter can be awesome. I know a company in my home town who’s running a campaign from April 1st, 2009 to May 31, 2009.

The outcome of the campaign is to increase the number of memberships at a fitness type business  So, bring new customers in for a short trial and keep all or a high percentage of them as a returning, long-term customer.

Well, they hired a local marketing firm and the firm used TV, newspaper, twitter, flickr and YouTube.  The TV spots were placed on YouTube and any images used in the marketing campaign were placed on flickr.  A twitter account was created and some of the folks involved in the campaign tweeted about the campaign.

Here’s a screen shot of the twitter numbers – following, followers and updates.  They created and started posting on their twitter account the week before April 1, 2009 and haven’t posted anything since April 24, 2009.

The numbers tell us that they’re following no one.  They have 7 followers (most likely people involved with the campaign) and 8 updates, 1 of which is the only health related update/tip.  The other updates are news related updates about the campaign – kickoff, etc.

The TV and newspaper spots are doing more for bringing people out than anything, but I’m sure they could have or could be using the twitter account better. Beside, not everyone has a TV/newspaper budget.  Here are 7 steps to jump start your campaign using twitter:

1. Run a contest every week where someone wins something on the Friday of every week – a one month membership, a cookbook, etc.  It doesn’t have to be every week.  But in this case, running from 4/1/09 thru 5/31/09, is reasonable to hold a weekly giveaway to keep people coming back.

2. Use search.twitter.com to find people within 25 miles of the business location.

3. When you run a contest on twitter make sure people have to become followers of the campaign on twitter.  You do this in the contest rules.  See the next step as well.

4. When you run a contest on twitter make sure people have to retweet a short, predefined statement about the campaign that drives people to the main campaign landing page.

5. Use Nearby Tweets to help find local people to follow as well.

6. Use TweetLater so when people follow you back you send them an automatic, direct message that thanks them for the follow and announces your campaign and its landing page.

7. Place your campaign landing page web address (URL) in the Web setting of your twitter settings.

I’m sure there’s plenty more you could do for a campaign using twitter.  That should help with the numbers of folks who will become interested in your campaign.

The next thing I need to find out is how much, if any, was the social media part of the marketing package.  Viewing the numbers above, hopefully it was free.  

What do you think?  Should you use twitter for marketing campaigns?  Should you use it for local campaigns?  Any thoughts on how to better leverage twitter to make the campaign results better?  Share in the comments.

As always, if you liked this article or know someone who would benefit from it, please retweet using the button below.  I appreciate your support.

Hi folks.  Today I thought I’d update everyone on my results with the Twitter Traffic Machine.  The Twitter Traffic Machine is a set of videos that guide you through the steps it takes to gain followers on twitter.  It also guides you through the use of some free twitter tools that you can use not only to gain followers but also give you some ideas on using twitter in a different way.

Overall, I’m impressed with what the videos provide, for $27.00 you can’t beat it.  If you don’t have the time to search the web and read about all the different twitter tools and how to use them in a way that will help online, then I’d say $27.00 is extremely reasonable.

So what do you get with The Twitter Traffic Machine?  You get to watch 6 videos online using various free twitter tools to gain twitter followers and possibly make money doing it, and a cheat sheet that walks you through what the videos explain in more detail so you can follow the steps discussed in the videos later.

You can make money by selling the course which entitles you to a percentage of  the sale of the system, if you sell the system to other folks.  That is an example of affiliate marketing.  You sell something for someone else and you get a piece of the sale.  It’s so easy.  Not really.  You have to work at it.

Traffic, Traffic, Traffic

Whether you sell something or not on the Internet, or have a blog or a website of any kind, you want traffic.  You want to get as many eyeballs as possible in front of your blog, website, product or service.

If you can imagine a town with a main street and the various shops lined up on the sides of main street, you have the potential for a huge amount of people and eyeballs that will see your shop.  Out of all those eyeballs there’s always a percentage of folks who are going to stop and visit the shops.  And another percentage of those folks who are going to buy something at your shop.

With the Twitter Traffic Machine, you’ll get traffic for sure.  Below is a screenshot of my cpanel stats for the week or so that I’ve started this blog and started using the system.  I actually registered this domain in November 2008 but only started writing for it at the beginning of April 2009, April 10, 2009 to be exact.  Check out my archives. I’ve been keeping notes and I wrote that after one week I had over 700 followers.

One could certainly argue the quality of the traffic and that would be a valid discussion to be discussed in another blog post later, but from just a raw, “I have a new blog, how do I get traffic?” point of view,  The Twitter Traffic Machine will bring you traffic.  From a new blog standing on its own and a new blogger to get to over 100 uniques in two weeks is Rick-Diculous.     Also, I did not use any other blog traffic building techniques other than the Twitter Traffic Machine.

Affiliate Program

An affiliate program is a program where someone is selling something and you help sell it.  For selling it you get a percentage of the sale.  The Twitter Traffic Machine has an affiliate program.  So if you decide you want to sell it, and you do sell it, then you’ll get a percentage of those sales.  That is the beauty of affiliate marketing and most of the time it’s not easy to do.  Again, you have to have traffic, traffic, traffic.  Sometimes focused traffic.

With that said,  I’ve got great news about Twitter Traffic Machine, I made two sales in almost the first week.  Let me tell you, that’s phenomenal.  I’ve been blogging for myself and others as well as managing blogs for other folks for about two years now and I’ve never seen or experienced sales that quick from a new blog.  Now it might not happen to you right away but this is the incredible part of it for me.  Here’s a screenshot of my ClickBank account and the two sales I’ve made with Twitter Traffic Machine.  This is not a fake document.  I do this to show that it can work and more importantly the power of twitter right now.  Remember, I just started this.

So here’s the pitch…

“Like to know how to get 16,000 followers in 90 Days & Make Money.” Twitter Traffic Machine

If you like this article, please retweet it using the button below.  I appreciate your support.

Photo Credit: wheany

I recently joined the Twitter Traffic Machine system and it actually seems to be a pretty good system. Unfortunately, everyone and their brother is also doing it, and that can lead to, well, a ton of people getting a ton of the same tweets on twitter telling you how to get 16,000 followers in 90 days and make money doing it.  Or something similar.  Which could render it a horrible system for some folks.

With any kind of product or service, the vital question is “Does it provide value?” And of course there are varying degrees of value but with the Twitter Traffic Machine, it offers a quick way to gain followers and an affiliate program that allows you to make a bit of money doing that.

In the end, the tools that are used and explained with this system are very useful whether you want to make money with the affiliate program or not.

So here’s my link to the program – Twitter Traffic Machine. If I make a sale on the product that costs $27 bucks, I get almost $12 bucks – a 50% payout for this product.  Now, obviously that’s not a whole lot of money, but the idea is as you gain a ton of followers, you make more money.     Woo Hoo!!

However, like I said, everyone and their brother is doing it and flooding the twitter stream with what some folks might consider spam. Again, because there are free online twitter tools that are used and explained in the videos, I think it’s well worth the $27 bucks.

You could spend hours trying to figure out what is explained in the videos or possibly never figure it out. You don’t have to do the whole system. You can certainly use pieces of it to suit your twittering needs. Check it out!!

I’ll be writing more about it and other programs like it, as well as a few ideas that generated in my mind, so make sure you subscribe to DailyTwiTips.  By the way, I’ve been participating in the program for 2 days now and I’ve discovered a couple/few ways to gain followers.  I’ve even learned some twitter rules that I didn’t know about.

Let me know what you think.  Have you received any messages about the Twitter Traffic Machine?  Let me know what you think in the comments.

Did I tell you, if you comment and provide your twitter id in the Twitter ID field that’s a way to gain followers.

Also, if you have a blog and you comment, you’re latest blog post will be listed below your comment or other folks to browse over to your blog and read your stuff too.