Super Powerful Totally Easy Fan Centric Contest
I can’t believe I’m about to give away this killer idea. If you’re the first one to act on this, call your PR agent because you may be the first to do this.
First, I’ll give you the prize, then we’ll talk about a few ways to deploy the contest.
THE PRIZE:
The prize is to immortalize one or more of your fans forever by naming a piece of art after them. OK if your song is forgotten your fan may only reach demi-god status, but tell your fans the prize is immortality via art.
If you wanted to, you could name a song after a fan, or even write a song using the name of a fan. But that could be a little tough, so what about a remix?
The normal remix competition is to invite fans to put their own spin on one of your tracks. This works well because you could get a new version of your song for free. Pretty cool….if you already have a ton of fans because how many total fans will you need to be sure at least a handful will be able to make a decent remix worth rebroadcasting?
Ya, alot of fans.
So here is my angle. Just make your own remix. Make an acoustic version of a song you’ve already written and recorded. A live version. Whatever. Keep it simple. Now call it the “Fan Name Here” version.
Like: “My Awesome Song (Live for Jason Kadlec Version)”
Once you announce the winner – go ahead and give that song away, post a video of it on YouTube, or even put it up on iTunes and sell it. The benefit to you will really be in how you deploy the contest.
HOW TO DEPLOY THE CONTEST
I like Twitter as a way of deploying contests because Twitter can spread the message quickly and Twitter doesn’t “trap” links…meaning if you click the link, you don’t get auto redirected to an annoying “are you sure you want to leave” page.
So it works like this – you have a page on your site that you’d like people to go to. I’d make it a page with a free download if you haven’t already done *everything* to acquire as many emails as you can.
Make sure fans have to give you their email in order to get the free download. Topspin has a great Email for Media widget to do this, but MM Forms- a free plugin for Wordpress could set up a “good enough” version.
Now, on the page with the free download, below where the fan is going to put in their email, put your contest wording:
Thanks for getting the free download! Now, tell your friends–they get a free download from your recommendation and you could be IMMORTALIZED in art!
We’ll name a remix of this song after YOU. All you need to do is CLICK THIS and post a link to this free download to twitter.
Or copy and paste this message to Twitter: I love “Awesome Song” free download is at “Bit.ly”
We will select one person between now and the end of the week to win. When it is time to select the winner, we’re going to pick the most recent post…so tweet this often to improve your chances!
The winner will be announced on Twitter – so be sure to follow us: @ourtwitterhandle to see if you or one of your friends is immortalized!
….or some variation of this.
Also repeat the contest call to action and links in a follow up email, and or on the page that delivers the free download. For those of you who use Topspin, this means knowing how to use the email.php file included in “The_Pill.”
If you were to use MM Forms, just put the text for the contest in the email that has the link to download the track.
SECRET!
Here is a secret about posting links to Twitter…you can hyper link to twitter AND default in the tweet by putting the following after the twitter link: /home?status=your message here”
So a complete twitter link would look like this: <a href=”twitter.com/home?status=I love Awesome Song – get it here for free http://bitl.ly”>Click here to become immortal</a>
If you put that whole thing into the HTML editor (if you are using a blog software) and NOT the visual editor, then it will just look like this: Click here to become immortal
CONTEST VARIATION:
Well if you think you’ve gotten every last email you can, or you’ve already run a free download contest and don’t have another free download, you *could* forget about Twitter and just say that someone who buys your record directly from your site will be the lucky winner. Make it the 500th or 1000th buyer or something. Even if you don’t sell 500…you could always make it up.
BIG DISCLAIMER!!!!!!
I’m not a lawyer! Contests are probably governed by laws that most likely vary state to state. If you try this or any contest you have now been warned. You might need to pay off your government (I mean secure a license) to allow you to do a contest or sweepstakes. You may need to hire one of those guys who talks really fast and can write very very very small fine print in order to run any kind of contest. And you should *always* hire a lawyer before doing *anything* to make sure you or anything you are doing is legal.
OK, so now you can’t sue me if the man comes calling.
Have fun making one (or more) of your fans immortal!
How to Write Emails with Hooks
Today I was emailing with a musician who had sent me a better than average email blast. It a nice layout with the content in the left column, a list of tour dates on the right and good graphic / color scheme etc. A nice design. It was also clearly and unmistakably the writing of the artist, starting with an opening paragraph with a personal note, and keeping that same voice throughout the email.
But I couldn’t help trying to improve it to make it great. The one thing it lacked was that it did not lack for information. It was all in there. Every last thing you could possibly tell someone about what was going on last month / this month.
To be totally honest with you (and with the artist should he read this post) is that I didn’t read the whole email. Why? It’s not because I’m not a fan, in fact his music is quite good. It was because his email looked like way too much work to read.
It was so long that just I read the first paragraph, tried to skim the rest and then moved to the next task of my day. Unless the point was just to read the first paragraph, then I don’t think the email succeeded in accomplishing its objective with me.
I’m sure mega fans who line up around the block to see their favorite artist would read every last word. But if that is the case, then I’m sure they would do this as well:
- They’d take a hook and click it.
So the email doesn’t need to be targeted to just your super fans. Instead you can broaden the appeal of your email with these two simple tricks.
Easy trick 1: Make a hook and link it
The first easy thing you can do is the hook link. Want to know more? Click here….
(that’s an example….it’s not a link) But if you’ve read this far you kinda wanted to click there right?
So here’s the deal, focus your email on one main thing. Take everything else and put it into a blog post. Write a good lead sentence that ends with “Click Here.” and link those words to that post where now you can fill in allllll that other info that most people would not have read in your email anyway.
Your super fans will click and read it. And because “curiosity killed the cat” you may actually hook more normally passive readers into it as well. They won’t tune out all that info when it looks to them like your email is a short novel.
And you will Track the Link won’t you?
Easy trick 2 Put WIIFM in your email!
The other super easy trick is to put WIIFM in there. “What’s In It For Me.” One of my clients and I bet which email subject line would get more opens and more click throughs. The looser did not have the word YOU in the subject line. The winner DID have a subject line with the word YOU in it.
Re-write those emails and see if you can take out every “I” and “we.” Find out how to write in the 2nd person. ( I /we is 1st person, they/them is 3rd person).
Do YOU want a topic written about something specific? It’s just a comment away. Leave a comment below and I’ll hook you up with some free info if I can.
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