Debby Icide had never used Twitter, but all it took was one tweet to boost sales at Gaia Essentials, her small boutique in Moss Beach, California, that sells homemade organic soaps and all-natural skin care products.
The enticing missive, which increased traffic to Gaia Essentials’s website 400 percent in a matter of hours? It was part of a game called a Twitter treasure hunt, reports Inc.com.
Icide’s is one of several small businesses in the Bay Area that participated in the game, in which Twitter users are asked trivia questions about local companies for the chance to win prizes.
Jason Sutherland, the founder of Peninsula Shops, a Web-based community portal, devised the game as a way to promote local businesses. Every morning for a month, Peninsula Shops tweeted a trivia question about a company.
In Icide’s case, Twitter users were challenged to name the third ingredient in Gaia’s Cacao Tangerine Soap for a chance to win a $25 gift certificate. To find the answer, visitors flocked to the store’s website, and many stuck around to do some shopping.
A former Web designer who grew up in the Bay Area, Sutherland founded Peninsula Shops last year to be something of a “chamber of commerce on steroids,” he says. Businesses pay Sutherland a fee — $180 for an annual membership or $20 a month — and Peninsula Shops markets them on Facebook, Twitter, and its website.
The idea is to help small-business owners who either don’t have the time or the technical know-how to promote themselves online. One of the store owners Sutherland signed up didn’t even have a website or a company e-mail address. “The question is, How do you stay relevant?” Sutherland says. “At this point, it’s important for every business to have some sort of digital presence.”
Photo by candyaddict/twitter.