Today, Social Times wrote a piece on Cyber Lion Grand Prix winner Pay With a Tweet. The company allows you to do exactly what it sounds like, put your product up for “sale” for social currency. “If a customer tweets about your product, they get it for free, and you reap the promotional benefits of their tweet.” Pay With a Tweet came to life when Leif Abraham and Christian Behrendt were looking for a new way to promote their book. They say, “No one really knew who we were or how to find the book…we decided to give away the book for free as long as the person tweeted about it.”
With Sports organizations making a push to become immersed in Social Media, this would be a wise practice to pursue. While it might not be financially lucrative to “give away” tickets, teams can certainly offer dramatic discounts for a tweet. The “pay with a tweet” system could certainly apply to Facebook, allowing fans to pay by posting on their Facebook wall to tell their friends about the tickets, the promotion, and the team.
The Oakland Athletics have developed a Follow and Save campaign that loosely mimics the “pay with a tweet” concept; for 1 week every 100 followers the Athletics gained, the discount price on Field Level tickets for a specific game would increase by $1. The initial campaign showed promising results; the Athletics’ official Twitter account (@Athletics) increased from 18,118 to 18,690 from June 13th to June 20th, an improvement of 572 fans (rounded up to 600) that resulted in $6 off per Field Level ticket for the July 4th game. [Note: The @Athletics twitter account has 19,300 followers as of 6/28]
The Florida Marlins have one of the lowest average home attendance figures as well as the least followers on Twitter among MLB teams (@Marlins – 8,125 followers as of 6/28), they would be a prime candidate to employ a “pay with a tweet” campaign to boost ticket sales, attendance, and social media contacts. This would also be an interesting initiative for the team with the most Twitter followers in MLB (@Yankees – 389,650 followers as of 6/28) as well as a Minor League organization, such as the AAA Sacramento RiverCats (@Rivercats – 6,165 followers as of 6/28).
Will Exline 