And now for something completely different. Forbes.com announced a twitter contest to come up with a twitter contest (way to crowd-source Forbes!). Coming up with ideas is my brain’s favorite activity.
When I heard about the contest, the gears immediately started grinding. Forbes didn’t do a great job defining their goals to us for the contest so I had to guess, but that wasn’t too hard. They want more readers, more visitors to the site, and they want their new Twitter presence to be effective. What better way to kick all that off than with a contest?
So, I went through the process I go through when helping clients. First, what are the goals specifically? Then,
Who? What sort of Forbes audience is on Twitter and likely to engage in a contest. I doubt too many of their wealthy readers would care to bother with a contest. They’re too busy, you know, running businesses and making money. But there are plenty of young upstarts looking to make a name for themselves in the business world. They need (and want) visibility, attention, and opportunities. So, best audience are the folks looking to take the fast track up the corporate or entrepreneurial ladder.
Why? Why would these tweeps want to enter a Forbes contest? Fame? Fortune? Yes and yes, but I don’t think Forbes plans to hand out a million bucks to the winner. What they can offer are the visibility, attention, and opportunity I mentioned above. Highlight the winner in the magazine or online in bio/resume style. This is a win-win-win all around. The winner of the contest gets to get their info in front of some major business people, Forbes gets an interesting story, and high profile business readers get a list of some aggressive and hungry upstarts in the field without having to read resumes.
So now we get to the…
What?
An elimination contest that highlights entrepreneurial spirit — confidence, leadership, decision making, guts, intelligence, tenacity, nonconformity, etc. Start by asking people to tweet why they should be the next Forbes entrepreneurial/business/financial star and then select the best 30 (or 50 or 20). Then throughout a week, or two-week, long contest have a series of Twitter assignments or questions that demonstrate entrepreneurial/business/financial skills.
A team at Forbes will eliminate a number of contestants at the end of each assignment until down to the finalists, and then again until a winner emerges.
Forbes can reference articles from the archives about qualities of entrepreneurship, leadership, great managers, etc. for both contestants and contest followers to read.
Hasn’t the Whole Reality Elimination Thing Been Done to Death?
Obviously not. People still eat up reality elimination shows like they’re chocolate desserts frosted with crack. So this uses a formula that clearly appeals to people, at the same time it introduces novelty by switching up the delivery platform — from television to Twitter.
Image Credit: Little Doodles
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