Earlier today I wrote about this promotion and posted it on The Lip-sticking Blog since I am the guest blogger for Wednesdays. So I'm posting it here as well.

Wednesdays are my guest It's tax season again, the time of year that we all love to hate,
especially us small business owners! I handed over all my papers to my
accountant a couple of weeks ago which of course is the hardest part of
the job. I have two daughters that are both in college now so I was
excited to learn that I'd be getting some tax credits for this. My
oldest daughter is in her second year, in what I believe to be the #3
most expensive college in the U.S. – NYU!

Anyhow I recently received an email advertisement from the Neat Company in which they invited me to "Tame the Paper Monster this Tax Season" and enter the "Paper Monster-Less Tax Day Giveaway". So it got my attention and I clicked through to learn more. 

They're promoting their NeatDesk scanner
and digital filing system that digitizes and organizes documents, such
as all those little receipts that you need for tax time. Their website
has a brief, instructional video that demos the product and clearly
states it's features and benefits. I'm liking that more and more
companies are using videos online to communicate their products or
services. Very smart online marketing.

Also what I like is that this promotion is very simple. They're giving
away 10 of these little NeatDesk products with the intent to "spread a
little organized, digital love this tax season". So I clicked on the
"Enter Now" button and was taken to this blog page which told me about the two ways I could enter the sweepstakes:

1.
I could comment right on the blog post telling them how NeatDesk will
help me reduce paper clutter and simplify my life at tax time. They
reminded me to use a valid email address so they can contact me if I
win!

2. Or I could follow The Neat Company on Twitter and re-tweet the contest by posting a pre-written tweet that includes a short url and the hashtag #papermonster. 

So
I did both, entered through the blog promotion and through their
Twitter promotion. The Neat Company currently has 1,245 followers, now
including me. I did a search for #papermonster and found a whole page
and more of others who "want to Tame the Paper Monster" as well.

Yesterday I attended a breakfast event in Rochester with guest speaker Peter Shankman on social media which I wrote about on my blog here.
Peter's advice was to keep it simple (so it can be retweeted) make it
fun and make it relevant. This sweepstakes promotion does it all. Now I
hope I win one of these little wonders. Will make my life in 2010 much
simpler.