One of the nicest parts of working on Local University has been the opportunity to meet with great local search practitioners that have helped us put on the sessions in each market. In Spokane, it was Ed Reese of Sixth Man Marketing & in Minneapolis, it was Aaron Weiche of Five Technology. The two of them jumped in with both feet to help make Local University a success. It has been a pleasure seeing and learning from the tactics and techniques that they have put together, on the ground, to make it work.

In Cleveland, we have teamed up (among many others) with the Karcher Group’s Collyn Floyd to help with logistics and marketing. For the past few months when she is not “scouring town/thrifting for the ultimate fashion bargain” she has been helping organize and plan the next Local University on June 30th.

Today, she put together a plan for Twitter contest to give away one free pass for the event. The plan was a joy to read and will be a pleasure to implement. It is simple but spells out the necessary steps to engage in the contest. It provides enough detail in clear language that will make it easy for the local, non-Twitter savvy Chamber partners as well as more sophisticated sponsors to execute. Here is a short excerpt of the guidleines for the event and they are dead on easy to follow:

The event sponsors will post numerous tweets regarding the contest asking those who want to win a free pass to retweet the message with the hashtag #localu. The hashtag will help us track who is interested in winning.

The contest will end on June 15 and a random Tweeter will be awarded a free pass to the June 30 conference at the Educational Service Center of Cuyahoga County.

Collyn included not only specific instructions for the contest but sample tweets as well:

Join @Google @Bing for Local Search Workshop in NE Ohio http://getlisted.org/neo RT w/the hashtag #localu 2B entered to win.

Help promote http://getlisted.org/neo Local Search Conf. RT w/the hashtag #localu & be entered to win a free pass

Spend a day at http://GetListed.org/neo‘s conference on 6/30. RT w/the hashtag #localu & you could win a free pass.

Join Anita Campbell of @smallbiztrends 4 http://GetListed.org/neo conf. RT w/ hashtag #localu & u could win a free pass

Join Local SEO experts @davidmihm @mblumenthal in CLE on 6/30. RT w/ hashtag #localu & u could go 4 free. http://getlisted.org/neo

Join @clevelanddotcom & others at http://GetListed.org/neo conference on 6/30. RT w/the hashtag #localu & u could go 4 free

Hear SEO tips along w/@NEOSA_nellis at http://GetListed.org/neo’s conf. RT w/ hashtag #localu & be entered 2 win a free pass

Here is a copy of both her planning document and the sample tweets that she put together that will make participation so easy for all. The documents can serve as model documents for Twitter contests that you might run in your local markets:

GetListed.org Twitter Contest Guidelines & Instructions

Sample Tweets for getlisted

I am not being totally altruistic in sharing these two documents. Besides providing you with a great document that you might be able to use for your own event, I am hoping that you will Tweet away the opportunity for folks to win a free pass to Local University Cleveland on June 30th!