Are you seizing the opportunity to place your business in front of Theo Paphitis each week? If you’re not using Twitter already or you are but not entering Theo’s Small Business Sunday Awards every Sunday evening, you are missing out on potentially massive exposure! Let me explain;

Every Sunday between 5pm and 7.30pm (UK time), Theo Paphitis (@TheoPaphitis) invites small business owners to send him a tweet to promote their business. The conditions of entry are

  • Tweets must be sent between 5pm and 7.30pm on Sundays only
  • Tweets must be sent to @TheoPaphitis
  • Tweets must include the hashtag #sbs

After 7.30pm Theo personally looks through all the tweets he has been sent and chooses his six favourite entries. His chosen six receive a re-tweet (RT) from Theo which is seen by his 144k followers! I encourage all my trainees to enter every week because regardless of whether they win, vast quantities of Twitter users are following and engaging with #sbs (if you click on a hashtag in Twitter it shows you all tweets which have used the hashtag) so it’s a fantastic opportunity to place your business where thousands of other Twitter users are looking!

On Sunday 24th July 2011, I sent my tweet to Theo as I have for at least 20 previous weeks and logged out of Twitter to watch a DVD with my husband. Around 10pm I logged in to check my messages and to my amazement discovered I had received 80 Twitter mentions! THEO HAD PICKED ME AS ONE OF HIS 6 WINNERS!!! Over the next 24 hours I received at least 250 more messages and gained a similar amount of new followers. There have also been discussions about the possibility of there being an event for all SBS winners to attend and meet with Theo himself! HOW EXCITING?! Here is my winning tweet

Theo's re-tweet of my winning entry to #SBS 24/07/2011

So, to help your chances of winning SBS, here are my top tips;

  • Make sure your tweet is sent at the right time on Sundays. If you think you’ll forget to send the tweet, use TweetDeck or Hootsuite to schedule your tweet to post within the timeframe.
  • Don’t send more than one tweet – you’ll only annoy Theo and decrease, rather than increase your chances of winning!
  • Your tweet must include @TheoPaphitis and #sbs to qualify for consideration
  • If you provide services, state how using your services saves businesses time. If your supply products, why should businesses or consumers buy your products? Explain the benefits in your tweet.
  • Include a link to your website and use a URL shortener (bit.ly etc) to save space in your tweet.
  • Don’t use text speak to fit more words in – you want people (and more importantly Theo) to be able to understand your tweet – but using ‘&’ instead of ‘and’ does save two characters!

Have you won?

Congratulations! Being chosen as a winner is a fantastic achievement! Thousands of business owners are entering each week and to be one of the chosen six is no mean feat! Well done!

Click here for a list of all the SBS winners to date (list supplied by @virtualbuscent)

Didn’t win this time?

Don’t give up. I entered at least 20 times before I won!

Leave it a couple of days and send each winner a personal tweet congratulating them on their win. On Sunday and Monday the winners will receive lots of messages and yours will likely get lost in the ‘noise’. By Tuesday the volume has decreased and by making your tweet personal to the recipient, you’ve placed your business in front of someone new who may just be interested in what you offer!

Good luck!