L.B.C

Good afternoon subscribers, friends, family, small pet owners, ladies and gentlemen and finally Realtime Media fanatics... 

my weeklee lesson:july 21st, 2010

I thought I'd kick of my blogging career with a post on social media which seems to be hotter than the current temperature in Philadelphia (currently 93 degrees).

Touching on the earlier post, “All Hail the King” The big fad around town, well around all towns is LOCATION BASED SOCIAL MEDIA. Now to the people who think Big Brother is more than a TV show they ask, why would I tell people where I am, what I'm doing and who really cares to know where my friends are?

Well frankly thanks to the newest statistics it seems a good number do…

As of July 21^st - Big news, Foursquare just hit their 100,000,000th check-in. I'd like to say my 100 plus check'ins helped but I much like most I'm fairly new to Foursquare...

What does that mean to you? Well in the past week via Foursquare check-ins I’ve gotten free tacos, a free pint at a microbrewery, a free t-shirt, free movie tickets and a ticket to a comedy show. More importantly Foursquare has personally brought much joy to myself and Realtime Media.

You ask how?

Well they have brought to the good people of Realtime = L.B.C – (Location Based Competitions).

Along with Sales checking in for coffee, and Creative Dept & Developers checking in at the newest lunch spot, its lead to internal check-in competitions.

Here are few photos the Mayor’s have proudly display to show who’s boss, well who’s Mayor.

The second picture is the office of our Director of Business Development who isn’t even the Mayor of his own office. Interesting isn’t it? I think so... 

 

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Stay tuned for more updates...and have a great day!

Cheers,
Chris

www.rtm.com

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After a long, drawn-out and bitterly fought battle, Will has captured the "crown" of Foursquare Mayor at Realtime Media - RTM HQ.  It's a title I've held nearly uninterrupted for over a year and today is a sad day.  However, I say 'Long Live the King'.

Now, I need only to capture the Mayorship of my own office or, at the very least Wendy L's cube...one of our other Programmer's workstation.  It's great that Location Based Services can illicit such competitiveness...and, thankfully no one was hurt!

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As a marketer, I can't help but get worked up waking through Times Square - in addition to being the epicenter of the civilized world (at least according to Madonna), it's also a haven for advertising and marketing.  Builders and developers are required to dedicate a certain amount of space to advertising....where most municipalities want less clutter, Times Square actually encourages it.

This week on a day of appointments,  Chris and I were trudging through Times Square(I say trudging because it was 98 degrees with a heat index of 114!) and we came across an amazing use of augmented reality.   Forever 21 has an amazing, bigger-than-life billboard which uses a video camera to capture passers-by in real time and incorporate people into the billboard.  Here's a great article about how it works.  

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“In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few.”

Shunryu Suzuki-roshi

Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

The above is one of my favorite quotes.  It means seeing things as they truly are, with fresh eyes and without prejudice, bias and assumption.      

This quote can be applied to practically any aspect of life but I can’t help thinking about how it relates to Social Media.  There are certainly no shortage of “experts” touting best practices, pushing engagements and listening tools all while telling people to create conversations.  And certainly, many of them are smart businesspeople who are adapting to the rapidly changing world of marketing and media.

BUT, there’s probably no better place in business for a ‘Beginner’s Mind’ than Social Media.  Truly there are no experts…there is no ‘right way’ and no one has it all figured out...the medium is too new, too fluid and evolving too quickly.  So, why not approach this with our Beginner’s Mind…remain open to possibilities, don’t judge, assume or over-analyze.  Keep an open mind and try to see things as they truly are.

If you’re interested in reading more, I’d highly recommend going right to the source – Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind is available here.

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This week I attended the Social Media Plus conference in Philadelphia.  It was a good showing for my hometown with nearly 800 people in attendance.  I was proud that The City of Brotherly Love could draw people who are into and interested in Tech and Social Media from all over. 

The event featured some great home-grown talent in the Digital Marketing, Media and Social Media space…notables including Beth Harte, Gloria Bell and Philly's own Rock Star of Social Media,  Frank Eliason from Comcast  .  Plus, some great presentations from Kevin Popovic who provided some terrific, practical lessons on how to utilize Social Media in Business Development,  and  a compelling opening keynote from Rohit Bhargava  

More info on the event is available here:  www.socialmediaplus.com and a great recap of the event can be found here. 

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I had to laugh this week when my iPhone Pandora app served up this great ad - for a Funeral Home while playing 'The Killers'. 

For all the good that contextual advertising can (should?) provide, there are plenty of really bad examples.  Check out this blog for lots more:

http://badcontextualads.tumblr.com/

And, this one from Steve Irwin's unfortunate demise:

http://www.shmula.com/194/steve-irwins-death-contextual-advertising-gone-bad

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All of this talk about Facebook’s privacy policies, Twitter’s incorporating sponsored ads into streams and audio commercials appearing in Pandora stations has me wondering – what are consumers’ expectations when using free services?  I’ve seen tons of complaints of Twitter ‘selling out’, people blogging about how they don’t want to hear ads on Pandora and, of course, the world appears to be up in arms over Facebook and privacy.

My question is – what is selling out when those companies need to pay their workers, cover their expenses and ideally turn a profit?  How can we, as consumers of a free product, service or tool, expect these companies to oblige us when we’re really not ‘customers’ of theirs at all?

I’m reminded of my time as Director of Advertising Sales at BlogTalkRadio.  If you’re not familiar, check them out – BTR is a terrific service that gives anyone, anywhere the ability to host their own talk radio show in real time – including taking phone calls and utilizing a chat room…all through a browser and a phone.  It’s completely free for both hosts and listeners.  And, when the live shows finish airing, it is automatically uploaded as a podcast and archived.

When I joined the company, we began inserting pre-roll commercials in the podcasts…and the outcry was immediate.  People were incensed that we would ruin their shows and ‘sell out’.  I spent hours responding to emails from hosts – explaining to them that we would only work with appropriate advertisers and do everything we could to match sponsors with relevant content.  While I understood those hosts concerns over the shows they put their hearts and souls into, I couldn’t help but wonder what they expected…when they were using BlogTalkRadio’s FREE service to reach their audiences and promote their businesses.

So, how much is too much?  How many search ads will you see in your Twitter stream before you say enough is enough?  (And, where would you go as an alternative?).  Pandora does have other more competitors which gives listeners choice.  And Facebook…well, they had competition once, before MySpace became irrelevant.  What do YOU expect?

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Sometimes in history we look back and see some huge gaping holes in the logic of certain ideas that in retrospect seem obvious, but I’m sure looked like really good ideas at the time. Keeping bloodlines pure for the monarchies. Land wars in Asia. The launch of New Coke. Interest only mortgages.

So now, with everyone from my Grandfather to kinda Mark Zuckerberg to Katie Couric to the Senate and the Supreme Court weighing in on privacy in some way or another, I have to start wondering if we all haven’t made a critical logic flaw all the way back in the pre-millennial days. Maybe we as individuals made a mistake in expecting websites to hold our information and keep it private. More importantly, maybe we as publishers and marketers made a mistake in ever being willing to classify [most] of the information that we allow to flow through our systems as private.

Should we have attempted to provide some sort of anonymity of collectible data? Should we have pushed for a greater responsibility for information from individuals online?

Is the true, fearsome power of Twitter not in the 140 character get-anywhere messaging platform but in the “everything is public” concept that quite simply states:

Everything you put here is public. It is accessible for the world to follow. It is accessible for the world to forward. It will not go away. You are responsible for all that you say. You are in control: you create and consume as much or as little as you want. 

Is that the lightning that titans Facebook and Google are really chasing? And if so, is it too late for the rest of to learn from it and revise our models on what we really need to market?

I know… What about SPAM? Phishing? No privacy policy seems to have stopped it. Without them, wouldn’t the vendors that are less transparent and ethical fall away through scourge and disuse just like now?

This may be more questions than opinion, but I’d be very interested in hearing yours. Please email back, or leave comments.

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So this week’s Facebook F8 conference brought sweeping new changes to more than just the 400 million Facebook users, it seems a bracing wind has swept across the internet itself bringing Like buttons and fanboxes to every site, page and post. TechCrunch asks has Facebook “seized control of the Internet” and Adage jokes that FB is approaching Skynet.

But with this opening up of communication that allows you one-click access to like almost any piece of content and see who among your FB community likes it too comes a worrisome loosening of privacy restrictions that have everyone from the Electronic Frontier Foundation to Consumerist to Valleywag and even CNet up in arms.

But more importantly little fishies, haven’t we seen attempts at global online information domination before? And did we already forget what happened to the behemoths of the internet that dared to go plowing into the vastness of the Russian Front that is the Online world?

“Just Type AOL Keyword” . Yahoo! . Microsoft Passport . Myspace/ . Google .  Fwump! Fwump! Fwump! Fwump!

“I’ve got a better idea, a better idea… Oh it’s the same idea…”

It’s not necessarily that they are the same idea, or bad ideas. It’s just that the internet and online world itself is growing and moving so fast and so fluidly that it is like trying to put a leash on the ocean. You can’t. You can only hope to fish, or contain a part of it, but not rule the entire thing, because it may not actually be a thing by the time you’ve decided what it is.

So as marketers we need to be mindful of our past and cast our nets mindful of our future— for ourselves and for our clients. There is our back yards, the Russian Front, there is the world, and beyond.

And now, from the Internets...

Speaking of Hilter, the classic "Downfall" meme took a turn for the newsy when copyright claims and the DMCA causing all of the parody videos to be wiped from You Tube and most of the internet this past week.

Boy was he pissed.

This has highlighted many issued regarding what is fair use, and what technologies are employed to remove content from sites. Although they can detect content is copyrighted, they cannot tell how it is being used.

The Twitterverse, is still trying to convince Justin Bieber to marry it. Why Twitterverse... Why?

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Last week I had the privilege of attending a workshop hosted by Dr. Flint McGlaughlin of MECLABS Group - www.marketingexperiments.com .  If you ever have the opportunity to hear him speak or take part in a workshop, I highly recommend it!

The session about Landing Page Optimization but much of the time was focused on how companies must identify an Effective Value Proposition.

According to Dr. McGlaughlin, a Value Proposition should be expressed in approximately 10 words (or so) and answer one simple question- “Why should your ideal customer buy from you instead of your competitor?”

An effective Value Proposition has three key components:

Appeal.  It must mean something to the prospect.  It must solve a need, answer a question or resolve a problem.

Credibility.  It simply must be credible.  “Est” words – fastest, largest, cheapest detract from credibility since it is simply not true….there is always someone faster, larger or cheaper.  Likewise, companies that are “a leading provider of…” ring hollow – how likely is it that multiple companies in a category all proclaim to be the leader?  And, of course, if they all say they are then none are.

Exclusivity.  It should contain the word only or at least imply exclusivity.  What is the one thing that makes you stand out from your competitors?

Use this litmus test in your own company and see what you come back with – can you boil down your product or company in 10 (or so) words and convey all of the elements above?  (Appeal, Credibility and Exclusivity).  If not, then how do you get there - how do you communicate your company, product or service in such a way that it resonates with your ideal customer?

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Previous Loyalty Weeks have discussed that Loyalty is a feeling, Not a behavior to cultivate, which is kinda the antithesis and crux of this Businessweek podcast but has been an endemic feeling among marketers for many years. But if loyalty is only a behavior to cultivate among the consumer, then the behavior that is created among the consumer is often rote to the point of becoming if not pointless, at least required.

According to a study by the CMO Council in Chief Marketer nearly 80% of marketers are continue CRM programs this year, and over 34% are significantly increasing their spend, even though only 13% said their initiatives had been highly effective in leveraging loyalty and brand preference among club members.

Oh, and 58% of consumers, want more compelling personal benefits and services, as well as more individualized deals.

So oftentimes, the creation of a loyalty program ends up seeming more like an ongoing rebate program rather than an actual loyalty program. This has only been complicated recently by the influx of the application of points and rebate-style loyalty programs across so many market segments [think hotels, grocery, coffee, airline, rails, banks, credit cards, bagel shops, ice cream, casual dining, retailers, bookstore, discount stores, outlet stores… is anyone left?].

The issue with these programs is two–fold:

1.       The customer doesn’t actually feel special or any real reason to be loyal because everyone has a program and there is no specific targeting for them.

2.       The cost of maintaining the rewards and of this program can cause the program to tip over and no longer be profitable to bring in new customers, or retain them, since you may actually be paying customers who were already engaging in a behavior, or who are not actually driving additional business only to you.

But it’s also been complicated on the other side by a whole new element: the addition of immediate communication and the cultivation of community through social networking and geolocation tools. Suddenly loyalty can become more than just soup labels pasted in a book or points collected on a receipt bottom, more than a couple cents or dollars off a purchase. They are badges automatically tweeted out to followers, and scores posted to your friends, and rewards that you receive when you post when you’re at Tasti-D-Lite and what you ordered.

Loyalty programs are also evolving to create a method to communicate the good and the bad, not just the rewards, for the transition of companies from a simple transactional relationship to a more symbiotic one. One can look at Forbes Magazine's foray into talking to their customer complaints over social media, or the Comcast Cares program, or even the Domino's Pizza turnaround campaign as a customer service initiative or as a wider cast net into how real loyalty – the "Feeling" loyalty, is cultivated.

Whether it is highlighting the communications channels over time through better behavioral targeting tools, integrating with social media, or adding fun to the programs by laying in instant win games, loyalty programs must continue to evolve to meet the evolution of the consumer’s need.

It’s almost funny that we are announcing an iPad giveaway during Loyalty Week. Many would say that Apple Enthusiasts are some of the most rabidly loyal of the technology culture sector, and yet Apple does not have any traditional loyalty program [many would say argue they tip to the opposite]. Nor are they particularly communicative outright, they let their loyalists do it for them… yet...OK, the blog was a bit light this week.

Cats love the iPad:

But Dogs… remain skeptical at best, but they stopped being early adopters after the whole fire debacle.

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Thanks to mashable, this graph attempts to breakdown the US population statistics against the Facebook user statistics.  See, although Facebook has over 400 million users, about 70% are from outside the US, leaving about 116 million from the good old US.

That means that any one state [outside the highly dense and dual resident-d DC area] caps out at less than 35% Facebook penetration.

And the city with the highest claim to residency vs Facebook patronage?  Why that’s Philadelphia.

Get the gianto infograph here.

 

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On Friday, my friend Dave Kawalec posted a touching and meaningful blog post titled "Facebook as a Memorial.  Dave is a tech-based blogger and an excellent writer.  I'd highly recommend checking out his blog, here: http://www.davekawalec.com/

The post is also copied below in its entirety:

"In November, my friend’s brother Sean passed away. Sean was a young man, and his death was tragic.

Time has passed, and Sean’s family and friends are grieving and moving on in their own ways. However, Facebook carries on indifferently, churning through its algorithms, spitting out reminders to let me know I haven’t been in touch with Sean in a while or to tell me that it’s his birthday. At first, these notices were jarring and felt almost callous on the part of Facebook. I know that probably sounds irrational.

Recently my feelings about Sean’s Facebook page have changed. It’s heartening to see Sean’s friends stopping by to post a note, saying the same things they might say standing by his grave with the same faith that their words will find their way to Sean. We are all reminded how much he touched our lives and how much he is missed. Photos of great memories are only a click away. The page has become a sort of memorial to Sean’s life. Notes are like flowers left on a tombstone. We see them and know we are not alone in our grief.

In the end, technology doesn’t change us. It just gives us new avenues to express our natures. Perhaps we congregate at Facebook and other social networks, not to connect but to feel connected."

I was particularly struck by this post because I am the friend that he references.  My brother, 26, passed away suddenly last November.  It's been a difficult time for my entire family.  And, one of the many challenges it raised was what to do with his digital life.  Sean was not tremendously active in social media - a Facebook page and presence on MySpace was it.  Still, what to do with these things?

Facebook does allow you to 'memorialize' a page by provding proof.  This prevents those birthday reminders, and 'hey you haven't talked to so-and-so in a while' odd messages.  However, I made the decision to keep the page as is and be able to maintain control...in a strange way becoming the executor of his social media will.  That way, I could delete any spam Wall Posts or filter out anything inappropriate if need be.

Much like Dave mentions above, it's touching to see people come to the page and post and it gives the family the ability to share in this outpouring...much more intimately that flowers left at a gravesite.

It's been helpful - Facebook, that is - in dealing with grief.  Starting within days of his passing and right through his recently passed birthday, the posts, messages, comments and thoughts that Facebook friends have shared has been invaluable.  This is truly how we live our lives today and I, for one, am thankful to have this platform to connect with people and be reminded that people care.

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This Month’s Philly Ad News features this article written by me.

It talks all about how advertisers can work activate their TV advertising campaigns with Online, SMS, and 1-800# data capture to create event-level marketing.  Now, even though the applications for these programs are easily seen with live TV events like Sports and News, that they can be just as effective with scripted programming like repeats of dramas, comedies, and classic movies.

Let’s use L&O. Tough on dirt BrandX cleaner wants to sponsor a “Best of Lenny Briscoe” week and creates a web site for the two or three weeks before that asks people to choose their favorite Lenny moments, participate in polls about characters, and enter a sweepstakes for a trip to NYC. People can enter on the site, or via SMS or 1-800-number. During the broadcasts, sponsored bumps can ask special questions that can be only be answered during that broadcast, and a discrete bug can show those results [“Would you have married Lenny?” “Who’s your favorite partner?”] and the next commercial break could show a breakdown of that market with those answers, same as the online site. You could even take comments from the site or Tweets from the #<3Lenny tag [that have been cleared by an admin, of course] and let them scroll across the screen.

It could be a one week event for a syndicated schedule, an on-going program for a weekly program, or a one night event like the National Report Card. By packaging the TV, the online, the SMS, and the 1-800-number, you have multiple media channels covered and provide multiple places for advertising insertions and conversion. Want to add radio? Sure. Outdoor? Of course. Each point just adds a new method of reaching people where they already are. You are reaching them where they are, how they are consuming your media. More importantly, you are making your consumers part of the media, part of the content that they love and respond to increasing their awareness of it.

I would love to see a brand take on the 8/pm showing of TBS’s ‘A Christmas Story’ and take 2 weeks to build up excitement online and through social media asking questions and creating polls leading up to a special annotated fan edition of the program.  Without breaking the story, and utilizing limited commercial interruptions, the brand could engage a fan base that already knows every word of the script by heart to sing along, make up new words, help define their favorite fake curse words, pick their favorite character or worst Christmas present ever, or back up Christmas dinner.  In living rooms, in bar rooms, in bed rooms, all over America people would be interacting with each other and the content they love, and seeing themselves reflecting back on the big shiny box.

Or for Star Wars, Or the Wizard Oz, Or Legally Blonde, Or Tuesday Night repeats of Tough Love, Or the Treehouse of Horrors week on the Simpsons…

To download a pdf of the article, please click here.

See RTM’s Case Study on the CNN National Report Card, the Second 200 Days.

Yes, I love Law & Order.

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So if we were to take a peep inside the mind of the average sweeper, I bet that before we peel back that page to the centerfold of desire for prizes and validation for things with minimal work, we’d find an easy-to-scan list of turn ons and turn offs regarding entering promotions.

And as it just so happens, the About.com has a great Contest & Sweeps site that has asked sweepers just that very question.  I think you’ll find it surprising [besides the spelling] how unsurprising the answers really are.  Many of the comments involve sweepstakes entries in exchange for magazine subscriptions…  this isn’t the type of promotion most of us are talking about, so let’s just skip those comments.

What attracts sweepers to a particular promotion?

•  Prizes that easily be used or turned over.
  •  Cash, Cars, Computers, stuff like that
• Entry forms that are very, very easy to fill out, so easy that they can use automated software.
•  Just having a sweepstakes or reveal-style game.

What’s a sweeper’s turn-off?

•  When the promotion is obviously geared to a specific target audience and well qualified as such that will require any thought or stoppage by them beyond this: Go, CLICK, Submit. 
  •  Peppered throughout this article are signs that the average sweeper does not like to all of the things that would naturally be attractive to the audience you could be building the program to attract and hold the attention of such as:
  • Fill out forms manually [OK, no one really likes this, but no one hates it THIS much]
  • Provide personal information beyond what is immediately necessary

• Play games or engage in content that may be relevant to a target audience.

• When the promotion is geared towards participants with access to high speed broadband.
  • Not to invoke the digital divide, but one of the #1 complaints in these comments is regarding load times.  The inference of that is that most of those complainers, and .: a fair number of sweepers, are still accessing the internet from dial-up or lower bandwidth connections.  So, if you punch up the creative and the content, you may create a natural barrier while doing what you would naturally do to increase the attractiveness and stickiness for the core target.
  • Coincidentally, call back to our Customer Service people have discerned that less than 1% of overall complaints lodged to us are regarding load times.

• When the promotion is too well promoted and supported by [relevant] advertising.
  •  A sweeper is often fully aware that a promotion is a numbers game.  The more entrants, the less the chance is of winning.  So a very well supported promotion will have a lot of entries, or acquisitions for the brand, but will lessen a sweepers chance at the prize(s). 

• When the promotion goes on too long.
  •  Sweepers want prizes.  Sweepers want prizes now.  They don’t want to wait 12 months to find out about them.  Now, your average consumer will also feel fatigue about a promotion if it’s going to go on interminably, but this does provide insight.

• When the prize itself has an inconvenient tax burden.
  • Average entrants will not think about this.  But a sweeper will.  Cash is cash.  A $1,000 gift card is essentially a $1,000 gift card forcing the winner to reserve about @ $400 to support the tax burden in the next calendar year.  A $50,000 car is a significant tax burden, especially of the rules do not provide the sponsor the out to allow the prize to be issued as cash instead, or the prize to be transferred. 

• When there is too much viral sharing of the promotion.
  • Sharing with friends is too much work
  •  The more people a sweeper enters may be more entries for them, but it is also more competition in the prize pool, too.

This is a perfect summary from one entrant:

    1. If I have to spend a half hour figuring out the instructions in the first place(usually how to play a game), it's not worth it to me. 2. If there is annoying or stupid animation (M&Ms comes to mind). 3. If everybody in the world is probably entering it (ex: Oprah contests). 4 If there are too many screens to negotiate...I almost didn't go ahead with the current Coke (Twist TXT) contest because there it was so confusing to get started - however, with a winner promised every 5 minutes for the rest of the year(!), I decided it would be worth spending the time to figure it out - - which paid off in 2 free movie tickets and $20 for the month of May! So it depends on the prizes.

—raymondlover2

So there you have it, in their own words. The things smart marketers are doing to make their promotions smarter, more targeted, more integrated with all marketing and advertising, and more social are the same things that are by their very nature making them less attractive to the sweeper segment.

Yet, just throwing up a $5,000 drawing as an add-on is sweeper heaven.

Melissa totally found this original article.

Photo by astrangegirl . She’s  reading it for the articles, I’m sure.

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One of the biggest barriers we hear when developing a program is that brands and agencies only want targeted leads. Yet, when it is suggested that they should pursue a more DM campaign, that isn't really what they want. What they really mean is that they don't want to attract any sweepers.

• sweeper: (n) 1. a person who enters a sweepstakes, instant win game, contest, or other promotion only for the potential of winning a prize. 2. a person willing to provide any and all fraudulent information in pursuit of the acquisition of your tasty tasty cash and prizes. 3. an entity so malicious and smart that it will also go so far as to hack into or hijack your promotion and system whether by digital or analog mean in pursuit of that sweet ambrosia that is your prize pool, even if that means by post-promotional litigiousness.

The general consensus in the industry is that these sweepers can only harm a win-based promotion and that everything should be done to exclude them. However, the downside of sweepers is modest and they could actually help a promotion. So you don't need to fear the sweeper.

Here are the facts.
1. There aren't THAT many of them.
Seriously, it still takes time to find and enter a promotion in a void, and you are doing a lot of great work to promote this promotion through advertising and other marketing to your potential consumers. The vast majority who see your promotion are your targeted consumers. Not the sweepers.

2. Sweepers are still consumers. Possibly YOUR consumers.
Everett Katzen*, the owner of Springboard Media, the company that provided us the Sonos S5's for our drawing, had an online coupon picked up picked up by Fatwallet.com that produced results100 times the actual traditional online spend. Everett says, "The publicity I got from the viral free spread is worth way more than the pay-per-click I spent". The site is known as a sweeper and coupon aggregator and it has been a site whose traffic clients have asked me to block....from a 'hack deals and sweeper site.' What a shame.

3. Use the Registration Fields to Segment
The whole reason we have registration fields and reports are so that we can weed out who is in the target range for the promotion from who isn't. Then you'll know your Sweeper Quotient and how to adjust for next time.

4. Sweepers aren't Hackers.
Sure, they may have some online tools to help enter every day, but they understand they still have to play by the rules if they want the prize. That's why we write the rules so stringently.

5. Sweepers are a valuable, leveragable online community.
Some have a keen understand of social media, and that network of blogs and sites can improve your rankings and reputation as you build your traffic online. That's more organic people into the message as well as those that are into the prizes.

6. Sweepers want the Prizes, so keep them relevant to the brand.
Don't just give away cash. Don't just run a Sweepstakes. Build a promotion that underscores the brand message and business goals, and the provides prizing that works in concert with them, and you will by nature only attract those in-target people. A Midwestern mother of 3 won't want an instant win chance for a 3-Bluray set of the greatest UFC fights of all time and a chance to meet Brandon "The Truth" Vera for your energy drink, unless she's into it.

7. If someone is really interested in Numbers, you got 'em.
Let's face it, sometimes it's all about the numbers. Sometimes, they can help you get there.

8. If you make it so hard that Sweepers won't enter, are you making too hard for anyone to?.
Or: Who cares if there are a few dorks at the party? At least the cool kids knew where it was. There's always an impetus online to build to the exceptions instead of the rules, and to cover each and every possible PC out-clause what if scenario that by the time it's over we've forgotten what 95% of the audience will actually be doing. If you make it easy, and you make it simple, and you make it fun, and easy to find, people will come and give you their information in exchange for the chance to interact. Then we go back and figure out what it meant. If you going in and start by trying to exclude groups, you'll end up making it hard and turning people off you might have wanted. Or confusing people that may have had fun. Don't do that.

Make it easy. Make fun. That way you win, too.

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