The other day I came across a great WordPress plugin that let’s you offer up file downloads to your website visitors in exchange for sharing your business with their Twitter Followers. I’m a fan of this type of reward system, so I think we might implement the plugin here on Open Source Marketer to give away some of our training videos and charts.
The plugin is called TweetAndGetIt and tying a protected download to a Tweet plays on the idea that word of mouth is the least expensive and most powerful form of advertising and that social media helps to compound the effect.
I’ve seen this type of reward system implemented in shopping cart checkouts. The WordPress Shopping Cart plugin Cart66 used to offer a discount on the purchase price of their plugin if you tweeted about them before completing the checkout process. Offering these incentives encourages people to share your business with their social network at the point when they are most interested in getting something from you, which means they are motivated to participate.
The same developers also offer another plugin called ShareAndGetIt that includes support for Facebook. I haven’t come across anyone who is using that one yet, but according to the ShareAndGetIt website you can, “Share any type of content from music, photos, videos, wallpapers to Ebooks, software, tutorials, icons, Web resources and so much more.”
In the video above I show how a website is using the TweetAndGetIt plugin to share their mobile app code with their website visitors. If you’re interested in seeing the plugin in action, be sure to watch the video. I’m looking forward to trying the plugin out on a few of my own sites to see how different audiences respond to the requirement. Longterm I’d like to see the plugin expanded where you can give none social media users an alternative option for sharing your business to complete a download, similar to an email tell a friend form, but for now this is pretty interesting on it’s own.
Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com
