I’d like to share our gratitude and excitement for all the entrepreneurs who participated in our Twitter contest consisting of us giving away eight years of Infusionsoft service and Netbooks to compliment it in an effort to kick off Entrepreneur Independence Month. See who won and some interesting details about the contest!

Here are the winners of the Infusionsoft Entrepreneur Independence Contest:

They won because they followed Infusionsoft and Tweeted why they would benefit from us. Pretty easy!

This was our first Twitter contest of this kind; I found it was a cool way that we made a difference for those who were interested in our service. I wanted to make it unquestionable that this was not an attempt to spam Twitter because we had the opportunity to truly connect with people who care about what we do and we seized it.

For those who are interested, I want to share a little background into the discussions leading up to this contest. I admit it wasn’t easy, even if it was participants doing all the work. We learned a few lessons as well as affirmed several hypotheses about running a Twitter contest.

It all started from our VP of Marketing, Dave Lee, who suggested we should do something on Twitter to tell the world about our software this month. Bear in mind, we recently removed previous setup fees and now offer a free trial, so this is great way to add icing to the cake. I wanted to do something unique that I haven’t seen brands do in a Twitter contest – make it engaging.

From drafting up the internal communications, landing page copy, landing page design (developed by Forty Agency, locally), deployment, and the approval from the executive team — it only took a few days. But the execution was critical to the success of it. I used various Twitter applications to monitor the success. Throughout the contest, CoTweet was helpful at managing the organized chaos of inbound questions from our audience.

This contest empowered people to share how and why they would benefit from a bundle of our software and a Netbook (small laptop) to allow them to work anywhere. We were inundated with plenty of passionate Tweets with how people would benefit from our software. Most importantly, it was nice to see that people would benefit more often than the business. This validates that there is still humanity left in this modern era.

A number of Tweets submitted from small business owners indicated they ‘saw the light’ where they can actually spend time with their family, provide better customer service, communicate more effectively and overall – develop their business and themselves by using our software. This is exactly what we’ve been saying for so long! Of course, I won’t preclude the odd chance that I’m reading too much into these 140 character narratives.

This was the goal of our Twitter contest – help people interact and engage with us, learn more about what we do and of course, help get the word out about our repositioning as a brand.  What’s next on that page is definitely something cool, so stay tuned.

A very warm “thank you” goes out to everyone who participated! You helped us see how we can help you and your business succeed. For the winners, I hope you make the most out of the next year of the software and your Netbook serves you really well.

–Joseph

UPDATE: Here is our press release on the Twitter contest: Infusionsoft Twitter Contest Awards Entrepreneurs with Tools for Growth

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• Entrepreneur Independence Month: Twitter Contest
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• How We Use Social Media