Most business people are still a bit suspicious of Twitter and don’t consider it as a marketing tool. They are wrong.

Despite some recent spectacular mistakes by otherwise reputable companies, Twitter is an important marketing tool if used creatively. And Moonfruit got it right earlier this month.

Moonfruit is a company that makes creating simple websites easy with the use of some online tools. For its 10th birthday they gave away a MacBookPro laptop every day for 10 consecutive days. To win all you had to do was tweet about anything but include the #moonfruit hash tag. It quickly became a competition for how creative you could be.

Moonfruit quickly became the top trending topic on Twitter. It’s brand awareness rocketed as did hits on its website and the numbers of people trialling it’s products.

At its peak it accounted for 2.5% of all tweets. People drew pictures, made videos and sang songs about the brand. It got so popular Twitter removed it from the trending lists, although has yet to explain why.

Wendy Tan-White of Moonfruit says the brand awareness the company got from the campaign was priceless. “You can’t buy a campaign like that,” she says. “It would have cost us millions.”

So what is the secret to using Twitter for marketing?
It’s simple, be creative, don’t just pump out tweets talking up your brand or product. Give the audience something interesting and they’ll do your viral marketing for you. Engage people in something they want to talk about.
Take it seriously, be ready to act quickly, be prepared to take the odd risk and don’t insult peoples intelligence by spamming the popular hashtags.