For the last week or so, I’ve been working on a plugin for wordpress that allows people to create a viral marketing campaign using wordpress and Twitter. Viral marketing with twitter you say? How’s that work?
It’s actually quite simple, and it’s based on the “tell-a-friend” email scripts of old… It goes something like this:
1. Twitter user arrives at the site and sees an offer to get something they want. To get this offer, they must enter their twitter username and password.
2. Twitter user enters twitter username and password, causing a forced follow and forced retweet message to go out over their account. The message contains a link back to the site.
3. Twitter user’s friends (followers) see the tweet and click the link.
4. Back at 1 we go.
On top of that, your also building your own twitter list for future marketing campaigns.
Don’t believe it works? Check out the change in growth on Ann Sieg’s twitter account, starting on March 7th, 2009, she activated this very same code. You can see the change in her twitter growth… Quite drastic.
Of course, you have to achieve 2 things for it to truely work. One is critical mass… Nothing goes viral unless a large group sees it. The other is something to offer… People won’t give you their twitter username and password unless they trust you, or you get something out of it.
In any case, if you want to apply twitcapt to your own site and maybe achieve some viral traffic, check out http://www.twitcapt.com/
Comments on this entry are closed.
Will the user be aware that this is what happens when they enter in their information? Also, how could they feel comfortable sharing their password? I'm concerned!
As long as no one goes modifying my plugin, the following things are true:
1) The plugin does not store information, only uses what twitter requires for API authentication… This is no different than if you were trying to make use of the facebook twitter plugin, or Tweetdeck. If one is concerned, they should change their twitter password immediately after using it.
2) The plugin forces disclosure of what is happening, including who you will friend, and what you will retweet. (see my example on the right).
3) The user could always create an extra twitter account for their own protection… Just like people create dummy spam accounts.
So while I agree with you entirely Alex that the user has to be respected (and I've coded it as such), it's not enough to deter me from creating it… Especially not after the success I've already seen with it. Plus it's way better than collecting email addresses in my mind.