Social Meteor: Pay it forward: How giveaways pay off in social media

You can attract thousands of Facebook fans or Twitter followers with the right giveaway. Attracting fans is easy. The hard part is keeping fans. Companies commonly use sweepstakes, contests, and coupons to entice Facebook users to “like” them.  Why? It works. According to a 2010 report by ExactTarget, nearly one-third of Facebook users (31 percent) are willing to ‘like’ a brand in order to get freebies or giveaways. 36 percent of users will ‘fan’ a brand to get a coupon or free sample and 40 percent will ‘like’ a brand to receive discounts, according to the report.