Freebies and giveaways are an effective way to promote your site, your brand  or your own self on the Internet.

For instance, you can compile a PDF ebook with some of your best blog articles and offer it for free. Some of the people who download this book may ultimately become your readers.

A software developer can give away a utility for free - if it gets popular, people may get interested in his other paid programs. Similarly, a musician may offer one of his tracks as a free download and that may indirectly promote his entire album.

Let People Say Thank You with a Tweet

The question now is how do you spread buzz about your giveaways on social sites like Twitter and Facebook? They’ll come, they’ll download the freebie from your site and they’ll leave without talking about you on Twitter or Facebook.

A service called “Pay with a Tweet” has come up with a very unique solution to this problem. To see a real-world example, click this link or the button above.

There’s a free PDF presentation inside but to download that file, you’ll either have to write a tweet or post a message on your Facebook wall.

Yes, this is like ‘forcing’ people to write a ‘thank you’ note on their social networks in exchange for a download but if you are giving away something very useful, not many people would mind doing that especially as they have full control of what gets posted on to the profile.

Offer free stuff in exchange for a tweet

Getting started with PayWithATweet is easy. Just specify the location of your file (screenshot) and the service will generate a unique URL for that file. People can post a message using Twitter’s OAuth or through Facebook Connect and they’ll immediately get a direct link to download your file.

To see the whole thing in action, hit play below.