I signed up to a webinar earlier this week. Nothing unusual in that, I probably attend quite a few each month. But I was struck this time by the use of free incentives to encourage me to spread the word and get more traffic to the webinar sign-up page.

Attracting people to a site using the lure of a free incentive is a pretty standard method. Spread the word, via social sites for example, and the right offer can produce a boost of visitors.

Free incentive possibilities include free reports or ebooks, articles, software, audios, videos, access to part of a membership site or the whole of a site for a limited time.

This week the deal was that I tweet to my followers in exchange for some ebooks, but it could have been any incentive from the above list.

So, are you offering a free incentive? Have you thought about combining it with the power of Twitter or Facebook? It pays to be aware of what others are doing on the internet. I haven’t listened to a word of the webinar replay yet, but it’s reminded me of some valuable lessons already.