Moonfruit Just Moonwalked All Over Michael Jackson

by Ryan M. Healy

in Business, Case Studies, Traffic, Twitter, Viral Marketing

It all started on July 1 when the topic #moonfruit started trending on Twitter. Within a matter of hours, “moonfruit” was more popular than Michael Jackson.

Naturally, people on Twitter started to notice. Tweets started showing up all over the place saying “WTF is #moonfruit?” After all, what could possibly be more popular than Michael Jackson the week of his death?

A Twitter Campaign with Staying Power

So here’s the scoop.

Moonfruit is a web design company. They decided to give away 10 MacBook Pros on Twitter, one a day for 10 days. And all you have to do to enter is tweet #moonfruit.

Turns out, the campaign caught on like wildfire, and #moonfruit has been the #1 trending topic on Twitter for 48 hours now. I don’t think I’ve EVER seen a topic trend that long in the #1 spot. Pretty amazing.

I’ve seen other guys run contests on Twitter, and they’re usually fairly successful. But usually there is only one prize, or the duration of the contest is hours instead of days. There’s some buzz, but it doesn’t last.

Two things Moonfruit has done differently:

  1. Give away a high-value prize.
  2. Give away 10 prizes.

This is what has made the campaign go viral. The campaign has created so much buzz that news of it is moving off Twitter and has been covered on popular sites like Mashable and Brand Republic.

As a direct response marketer, the key question I want to know is: Will Moonfruit be able to turn all this attention into new business?

How to Enter the Moonfruit Contest…

If you’re on Twitter, you too can tweet for a chance to win a MacBook Pro. Simply tweet this:

Celebrate 10 years of Moonfruit and win a MacBook Pro http://bit.ly/96bxC #moonfruit

Of course, you can tweet whatever you want, so long as you include the #moonfruit hash tag.

And, while you’re at it, you can follow me @healymonster.

-Ryan M. Healy

P.S. Happy 4th of July! Enjoy the holiday weekend, and stay safe.

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  • http://bit.ly/e8jo1


    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  • Ron Spinner

    While I would agree that you have to plan buzz marketing carefully–this is easier said than done. How do you stop it or slow it down? Not as easy as turning down an ad campaign.


    This comment was originally posted on <a href="http://www.cornwallseo.com/search/2009/07/03/latest-moonfruit-twitter-promo-press/#comment-72589" rel="nofollow" title="“Latest MoonFruit Twitter Promo Press” (http://www.cornwallseo.com/search)">Cornwallseo...>

  • RT @lyndoman Moonfruit Just Moonwalked All Over Michael Jackson http://tr.im/qOjl


    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  • Moonfruit Just Moonwalked All Over Michael Jackson http://tr.im/qOjl


    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  • Reading: The secret behind #moonfruit ’s success: http://bit.ly/4qp7N6


    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  • @John - Thanks for the comment and mention on Twitter.

    From what I can tell, they don't have any solid direct response mechanisms in place. So they'll naturally pick up some customers from the buzz... but not nearly as many as they could.

    My ideas for Moonfruit:

    1. Create some kind of incentive to opt-in to their email list. For instance, "Get two more entries in our contest when you opt-in to our email newsletter list!" Something like that. Then use autoresponder emails to drive new business.

    2. After the promotion is over, start telling their Twitter followers about their service and running Twitter-only promos that actually encourage people to sign up for the Moonfruit service.

    3. Capitalizing on what people are already thinking, they should either run a couple tweets or a blog post or something where the headline really is "WTF is Moonfruit?" I saw that posted scores of times in the Twitter timeline. People would read that, and it would give Moonfruit the perfect opportunity to explain their service.

    Ryan

    P.S. You're welcome! :-)

  • Moonfruit Just Moonwalked All Over Michael Jackson: It all started on July 1 when the topic #moonfruit started t.. http://tinyurl.com/mcdr7d


    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  • Ryan,

    There has been a lot of talk on how to use Twitter for marketing. #moonfruit is a good example of of how to do it successfully. But you post the real question "Can they turn it into business?" That would be worth knowing.

    John

    PS. BTW, thanks for the info. I too had wondered what was moonfruit.

  • @moontweet http://snurl.com/lpbro I didn’t win the MacBook Pro, but I might still win an iPod Touch! #moonfruit


    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

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