guest post by Donna DeClemente
We're now less than one month away from getting together in Columbus, OH for BlogPaws 2010. I'm one of the committee members helping to organize this event and while I'm a blogger, I'm not a pet blogger. However, I do have 2 dogs and 2 cats. In fact, I even have a Chinchilla which my daughter left in the care of my husband and I, while she's away at college!
I'm excited to be on the ground floor of this exciting new online community. And I'm looking forward to meeting all of you there, as a speaker. I'll be discussing Contest, Sweepstakes and Promotions - my specialty. Check out all the panels on our Sessions page, and visit the speakers on our Speakers page.
In light of my promotional marketing background, I've worked with the founders to develop the BlogPaws or Bust Sweepstakes, launched on March 1st. We're giving away two grand-prize travel packages to the event, in case you're not aware of it! It includes two nights at the hotel (the pet-friendly Westin in Columbus), and a pass to attend BlogPaws 2010. Three second place prizes include free passes to the event.
The sweepstakes is on a web-based application tool which enables us to launch the campaign simultaneously on our website, our Facebook Fan page, and on Twitter, all at once. It's called Wildfire and it creates a micro-site that can be either embedded or linked to a website or blog, and also added to any Facebook fan page. I like that the Twitter option give extra entries to people who tweet about the sweepstakes and are successful in getting their followers to enter. I've use the app several times for clients and I'm pretty happy with it. This is the first time I've used the Twitter option.
Wildfire is included in Facebook's Preferred Developer list and is in compliance with Facebook's promotional guidelines, recently released in December 2009. You need Facebook's prior approval to run a sweepstakes or contest on their platform, unless you are using Wildfire.
You can probably see that Wildfire is a cost-effective way to get a promotion up and running on multiple platforms- quickly and easily. Anyone who wants to integrate a promotion with their social media efforst, something I call Social Sweeps, can do this. The Wildfire app offers both a premium or standard version that fits in with most budgets. We're using the standard version for BlogPaws or Bust.
Check out the sweepstakes, enter and share. Invite others via Twitter. We'll be drawing the winners this weekend- and announcing them shortly afterwards. Good luck to everyone! I look forward to meeting you in Columbus in April!
Wildfire is a web application that allows you to create branded interactive promotions and campaigns including contests give aways surveys and sweepstakes.
Posted by: Softech Business Solutions | 11/05/2012 at 12:17 AM