Interesting to see a lot of campaigns specifically targetted at growing Twitter Followers or Facebook Fans.

• Las Vegas is giving away a 5 day trip over New Years. To apply, you need to follow @vegas and tweet your excuse to be there. So far, @vegas has 3600 followers.
• Sidney ran a contest where you had to become a Facebook fan and write something on the fanpage wall. The SeeSidney fanpage has 7700 fans.
• Air New Zealand first gave away 30 trips to New Zealand. To enter, you had to follow @kitweets and answer a trivia question. Result: 3500 followers.
• Air Zealand is now running a trivia contest on a Facebook app. So far, 3200 people have played.

Traditionally these campaigns would be used to grow a consumer database. Is a Twitter follower or a Facebook fan more valuable than an email address? Or is it Shiny Object Syndrome? Or isn’t about the aquisition but about the engagement; the process of entering into the contest. Asking somebody to give an excuse to visit Vegas will at least make somebody think about visiting.

I think a Facebook friend or Twitter follower can be much more valuable because there’s an opportunity for two-way conversation and interaction between community members. Something typically not part of database marketing. But if the objective is to broadcast on somebody’s wall or feed, it will probably lead to predictible failure.