@ShortySmallsUSA, @brownstar, and @FreeCreditJack, This Post's For You

I was sitting among retirees eating at Golden Corral in Branson, Missouri, at 4:00 pm on July 9 when I discovered the restaurant had free wireless internet. Quite the discovery, I thought to myself. So, obviously, I tweeted about it. That's what we do in today's society, right? Share the mundane and ironic with the world?

Fast forward a few hours. I'm sitting at home and checking what's new on Twitter. I've got a reply (or "mention", I suppose) from Shorty Smalls, the Ozarks-regional grill, bar, and everything else restaurant with a name that sounds like a late-model 90s rapper: "@thillsman Eat at Shorty Small's While in Branson. For FREE $7 offer, just say 'I want my FREE Twitter Shrimp!'" and the link to a coupon (right) that has since expired.

Just a day before the Branson daytrip, I tweeted about hearing the new Boys Like Girls song and asked for suggestions of other good music. One of the replies came from Brownstar, an Olympia, Washington-based "artsy power pop rock group", pointing me to free downloads of their songs. A few weeks later I saw a FreeCreditReport.com ad and asked Twitter where I could download all the firm's ad jingles. The reply I got was from Jack himself, FreeCreditReport.com's singing spokesman. "He" sent me a link to http://www.freecreditreportband.com/shop/ where you can download all six songs for free (which I did).

As a marketing major currently engrossed in Jay Conrad Levinson's Guerilla Marketing and Chris Anderson's Free, I can't think of a better way to connect with customers (or potential customers). After discovering that I was in Branson, Shorty Smalls sent me an amazing discount that will have me checking their tweets the next time I'm in Branson. Brownstar convinced me to download their music. FreeCreditReport.com gave me the tunes I wanted, spreading their clever marketing campaign to my hard drive. Just the fact that I'm writing this means that they're all successful in capturing my attention - the first step to capturing my business.

But each of these instances has something valuable that others don't: something substantial to make their communication with me more than annoying Twitter spam. Had I still been in Branson, the likelihood that I'd convince my family to eat a dozen free shrimp is more than likely. Brownstar and FreeCreditReport.com actually had free content to give me. Other companies have latched onto a word I typed solely to try to sell me something or show me their website, but these cases are an exception. As I'm sure Chris Anderson would argue, I was much more attracted by relevant and risk-free offers. Relevancy is not enough, but coupled with a powerful promotion (or in FreeCreditReport.com's case: a really well-planned and executed branding campaign) the tweets succeeded in their goal: forming a positive image in my mind.

I just hope there's another free shrimp offer the next time I'm in Branson.