Working at the speed of the Internet

So this morning I “entered” a contest that started with Urge Tattoos. At almost 40 years old a tattoo has been on my informal bucket list for a while, and I figure at my age, I can now get away with it ;).

There are several of us there that have been spamming imploring friends to help with ‘entering’ which consists of them “liking” Urge’s Facebook page and writing “I nominate Jodie Anne Gastel for a free tattoo, piercing or removal at Urge!”. That is great – friends have gone that extra mile to help me with my ever-quieting subversive behaviour. There is a bit of a feeding frenzy and energy is high – we are excited!!!

Then I saw this: All entries must be in by midnight August 31st.

Wubba?

That’s an eternity in Internets. IMHO, if you wait that long, you will have lost the buzz. The buzz is now – conceivably, they could have already held the contest, picked a winner, done the tattoo and posted the pictures by the end of today.  A sense of urgency in a short period of time will get you more ‘likes’ with less energy spent. To keep a buzz like that steady over 4 weeks isn’t impossible, but they’d have to have someone working at it every day until then. Not a lot of SMEs have that type of time to give in-house.

So what’s the takeaway from this?(Other than everyone in the world should talk to me before doing anything ;) ) We need to take a close look at why internet-based contests are run, what the desired outcome is and weigh the work needed to maintain a buzz over the long term vs. a bright burst – you might find that you get the same results with either.