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Dec 29

Results of the NameCheap Twitter Trivia Contest

December 29, 2008 • View Comments • Twitter

Social media tools are free, but that doesn’t mean that you can get something from nothing. Whether you are spending time or money, social media marketing requires investment, just like growing food or building apps or anything else in life.

That’s why I was so happy to hear that Richard Kirkendall, the CEO of NameCheap and a client of mine, was interested in giving away free domains in a trivia contest on Twitter. I added the element of overall winners to it and a tracking page, wrote the questions, and worked on the automation of the questions with the CTO, and we were on our way. Essentially, @namecheap asked a trivia question in Twitter every hour on the hour. To win a free domain, you have to answer “@namecheap (answer). The fastest to answer as well as two players and random get $9.69 automatically put into a NameCheap account that they have to set up to play. Since Twitter has an API, it’s all integrated. The people who answered the most correctly won iPods.

What were the results?

  • Over 4,000 followers gained in less than one month. We got dozens of comments from people who loved the contest and might win a Shorty Award in the Tech category.
  • Mentions in Mashable, Yahoo News, Domain Name News, and over 30 pages of Google results with bloggers mentioning it from all around the world. The contest generated 131 backlinks to one page, which went from a PR 0 to a PR 5 in one month. I have no idea how many backlinks it generated for the homepage, but I imagine it was more than 131.
  • Over a 10% increase in traffic with 47% increase in new visitors.
  • 20% increase in new customers. This is not a startup, but a company that has been around since 2000.

    • It cost Richard some domains he might have not sold anyway, the price of a couple of press releases, a few people’s monthly salaries and four iPods. Bloggers are on Twitter. Do things on Twitter that get bloggers talking about you and you get backlinks without spending a fortune on paid links.

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    Dec 22

    Please Ensure the Government Funds Stem Cell Research and the NIH

    December 22, 2008 • View Comments • Politics and Current Events

    I am sitting next to my sister in the ICU at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center I hate this place. My sister was diagnosed with leukemia three years ago, struggled with host vs. graft disease, and recently relapsed. I hate cancer. Every day I leave here, I feel like I’ve just seen war, to the point where it makes it difficult to sleep or even enjoy life. My sister’s pained face and voice are etched into my memory and it’s hard to think that someone who took care of you growing up is in so much pain. If having a family member with cancer feels this bad, I have no clue how it must feel to actually experience it firsthand.

    I have gotten over the part where I blame myself for not doing enough. Now I’m angry at our government. Is our government responsible for cancer? No. Could they be doing a lot more to fund research to prevent it or at least make the treatment seem somewhat humane? Absolutely. We’ve spent more money on the war in Iraq than in over 30 years of fighting cancer. And yet, I am more afraid of terrorism than before it started, and I’m still very much afraid of cancer. How could we let this happen?

    To the politicians who falsely led us into this war, you should seriously be ashamed of yourself. From an opportunity cost standpoint, you have caused more suffering in the world than I can possibly imagine.

    If you aren’t a politician who got us in this war, please write our current politicians and tell them to quit wasting the money we work so hard to get. If you think they didn’t waste our money, read Imperial Life in the Emerald City and then talk to me. Read this report which shows a 14% decrease in NIH funding since the start of the Iraq war. Or just look at someone in the ICU at M.D. Anderson or meet the families of the 1500 people a day who die of cancer each day in this country. I’m sure you’ll think otherwise.

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    Dec 15

    Result from my Zappos Experiment (and it’s Not Glowing)

    December 15, 2008 • View Comments • Twitter

    Zappos. Everyone loves their use of social media. They are the poster child for how a brand can use social media to evangelize.

    *Scooby Noise* Errr? Did not have such a good experience.

    I put up this post about a pair of shoes I wanted. I then went into Twitter and said “Hey @zappos, maybe you can help me out” and linked to the post. All I wanted was someone from Zappos to send me a few URLs with shoes that were similar so I didn’t have to comb through the site myself. And it took them a month to finally catch on, and I got three different people sending me messages on the subject. One of them found the exact pair for twice as much as I’d bought them for, but by this time, I’d already bought a similar pair of shoes from a department store for 30 dollars less. I was in Europe with limited internet access by the time they got back with me. Meh.

    I COULD NOT HAVE MADE THIS SALE ANY EASIER FOR THEM. I took a pic of the shoe I wanted with the size. Go and find it and send me a URL and NOT a product code, and do it when I ask you to and NOT weeks later. I give you money. Done. I operate the Twitter feed for @sunandski, and if someone made a sale this easy they would get a response within hours and perhaps minutes.

    Zappos is not the cheapest shoe site online by any stretch. Yes, they give you free shipping two ways, but if they charge more than even the manufacturer of the shoe, who cares? You can charge more if you offer the service, but in this instance, my shopping experience was not made any easier by going with Zappos.

    Crucify me for pointing this out. I really don’t care.

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