A few weeks ago, we wrote about a promotion from website builder Squarespace, where the company offered up 30 iPhones in 30 days to be randomly awarded to users who included #squarespace with their tweets.
The campaign worked in getting exposure - #squarespace was on top of trending topics for several days in a row – but we took issue with some of the messaging, as in reality, users were getting gift cards, not iPhones. Commenters had mixed reactions – some questioned how we could complain about something free (and we did ourselves in the article!), while others agreed it was misleading.
In any event, rival website builder Moonfruit has launched their own version of a hashtag-based campaign, and seems to have avoided the problems we saw with the Squarespace promotion.
Like the Squarespace promo, Moonfruit is offering up free Apple products for tweeting their company name as a hashtag: #moonfruit. Specifically, they’re giving away 10 MacBook Pro computers in 10 days, as a celebration of the company’s 10th anniversary. Each day, a random user who includes the hashtag will win one, and Moonfruit makes a point to eliminate confusion and say “if you win we'll deliver your new baby to your door!” Winners are announced via the company's @moontweet account.
Not surprisingly, this promotion is working. #moonfruit is Twitter’s top trending topic today, beating out the likes of Michael Jackson, #iranelection, and Wimbledon-related tweets. The lesson is becoming pretty clear: free stuff works as well on Twitter (and perhaps even better thanks to Trending Topics) as on the rest of the Web.