Waterstones - showing that Twitter can be fun for customers

There is a lot of coverage of companies getting social media wrong but less focus is placed on celebrating those who do it well. As an industry we need to be more positive and celebrate people who demonstrate creativity and innovation in their usage of social media. Last week I came across a Waterstones promotion available to its Twitter followers - the Golden Ticket Treasure Hunt.

The promotion

• There are 10 Golden Tickets hidden around the website
• Waterstone's tweets a clue to each one
• Followers scramble the site using their clue solving skills to locate the golden ticket
• Followers then email when they have found it
• First correct reply wins the prize
• Different prize for each Golden Ticket
• Prizes are showcased on landing pages linked to via Twitter
• Additional clues are given from time to time

The benefits

• Greater engagement of Twitter followers - during each treasure hunt Waterstones is talking to its followers
• Driving traffic to the eCommerce website
• Customers spend more time looking around the site to solve the clues
• Increase product views and appreciation of range diversity
• Ancillary sales generated off the back of this activity.

Whilst the format is hardly revolutionary (Willy Wonka anyone?), the delivery was neat and fun. And this is where I think social media has great potential - driving brand engagement by giving people something of interest that they can play with. We all like to be distracted for a while and business doesn't always have to be serious.

I would love to find out the actual impact of site traffic s0 have asked Waterstones via Twitter. I will update this blog if they are able to share the information.

*UPDATE*

The kind peeps @Waterstones have shared this info:

"We've had double the usual traffic from Twitter, and as you can see we've had 882 new followers in 2 wks"

So what do you think? Clever marketing or not?