If you’ve ever been to a conference or trade show, you’re almost always asked to drop a business card in a bowl to win a prize. It’s the tried and true way to generate some new leads. Those tactics may be changing with the advent of social media.

I recently attended the National Association of Government Communicators (NAGC) expo in Orlando. I tried something new at the TVG booth. I pulled out my iPhone and tweeted that I would be giving away a brick of St. Louis-based Bissingers chocolate to the first person who stopped by the TVG booth on the show floor.

Turns out my original tweet went a bit “viral.” Someone I’d never met before, Glenn Batuyong from the Unified Port of San Diego stopped by my booth after seeing my twitter post. He had not been following me, but saw the tweet on the NAGC twitter site, which picked up my post.

Glenn in turn tweeted about winning the chocolate and posted a picture of the chocolate, the flash drive he picked up with TVG information and our crisis communications brochure. You can see the picture at http://twitpic.com/3upu8.

One of Glenn’s followers, the Social Media Guide then retweeted about Glenn’s post. In the span of about three hours, my followers, NAGC followers, Glenn’s followers, the SMG followers, even TVG followers saw my original tweet and Glenn’s tweet. That adds up to nearly two thousand people. Not bad for a few minutes work in between conversations at the booth.

To quote from Glenn’s tweet, “Marketing over Twitter works!” I couldn’t agree more.

Follow Andy on Twitter: @TVGmediaguy