Like many, one of the reasons I use Twitter is to follow high profile people (and brands) that either entertain or influence me in some way – comedians, politicians, actors, musicians and brands. I also follow a number of elite sportspeople, including professional footballers.
On 2nd November I was flicking through my Twitter feed, scanning the tweets for anything that could entertain me during my lunch break. Something unusual was going on, my feed was being inundated with RTs from a selection of football heros (and a few zeros) with the following message;
“I want to win my club’s football shirt courtesy of @goaldash! Please RT so I can qualify to win!”.
After investigating the tweet further, it became apparent that it was part of a campaign for a new online sports betting game, in which users were encouraged to ask professional footballers to retweet their message in order to win a replica football shirt.
Goaldash
The concept of Goaldash is reasonably simple, it’s a football-themed lottery that requires the player to pick the six teams they think will score first out of 24 pre-selected fixtures. Some may argue that you could look at historic statistics to give you a better chance of winning up to £1 million, but it’s still basically a game of chance.
The activity on Twitter appeared as part of a social media strategy to help create online buzz around the game and one would assume, to get people play the game (£1 per line of six teams, not completely dissimilar to the National Lottery).
A quick search revealed that the Goaldash story has appeared on a number of online news sources in recent months; from articles published by trade to football fan websites. As well this, Goaldash has an active presence on a number of social sites (principally Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube).
With the potential for @goaldash to be seen by the millions of combined followers of Michael Owen, Rio Ferdinand and (perhaps the lesser known) Rory Loy, to name but a few; this is a great brand building exercise by Goaldash. There’s also the added ‘endorsement factor’ from high profile footballers too, and although I didn’t see an RT from the likes of Owen and Ferdinand, several Premier and Football League players responded (including Rory Loy).
From afar the Twitter competition appeared to be a compelling promotional campaign that should reach the intended target market, football fans that may occasionally gamble. Without knowing the numbers in terms of traffic and conversions it’s hard to judge if the campaign has been a success, but at the time of writing @goaldash has a total of 210 Twitter followers. As becoming a follower is required to win the competition, you could argue that a more sizable following would be expected.
So with this in mind, I thought it would be good to share a few ways to increase your Twitter following.
- Get the your profile up to scratch, ensure that you have a descriptive and keyword-rich bio to ensure you get displayed with similar profiles on Twitter’s Suggested Users page
- Feature your Twitter username wherever you can – from email signatures to promotional material
- Monitor trends, hashtags and top twitter users in your interested areas. You can target followers by searching parameters like keywords in bios, geographical locations and frequency of tweets
- Engage with people by replying to tweets, comment on breaking industry news and ask your followers questions. The #hastag meme can stimulate Twitter activity and can easily be tracked
A good following is one thing, but there is no doubt you need to invest time and resources to make Twitter work for you.