It’s all fun and games until you turn it into work, and that’s exactly what I did when I signed up for this mission from Smiley360 and Sleep Number. I was having fun, sampling stuff left and right, but high on the prospect of free goodies I took on too much and that was my downfall.

It’s Not Free if You Have to Work this Hard

I’m cool with the usual free stuff requirements – a blog or video and a few social shares. Something totally natural that you can work in without bugging people and looking like you totally sold out. And then, lured in by the promise of a free $90 pillow, I accepted the invitation to join the Sleep Number campaign.

Here’s what they want:

1. Visit a Sleep Number store and get your number
2. Share a photo to Facebook 4 times
3. 2 Ad tweets
4. 4 Photo shares to Twitter
5. 2 Comments on Smiley360
6. Report on sharing with 10 people face-to-face
7. 2 Posts on Pinterest
8. 2 Posts on Instagram

Visiting the store is quite a time investment for a busy mom. I was lucky they had a little Lego table set-up, but there were moments the toddler was zooming around the store squealing.

But the real killer is the social shares. One Facebook post, OK. People actually paid attention and posted their Sleep Number and it was kinda fun to see. But again and again…I’m probably losing friends and credibility with every post. Most of the time I feel like nobody is paying attention on Twitter so I loaded up my feed with as many tweets as I could.

Rookie Mistake: I Tagged the Wrong Company

And then this happened: In my rush to get it done, I tagged CrowdTap instead of Smiley360 and my posts were rejected! So not only did I already bug everybody, but I was going to have to do it AGAIN if I wanted to complete my mission. I had gone this far for the darn pillow, I wasn’t going to let it go, so I did it with an added apology to friends that I had let this happen.

I’m still waiting to see if my last posts were accepted, so fingers crossed. This better be the most wonderful damn pillow in the world. (and maybe I will post a photo of it because I Want to this time)

The 2021 Update:

In the end, I did get that pillow! The irony of this update is that three years later I am on here trying to find out exactly what pillow it was I got, because it became my husband’s FAVORITE pillow. And he is the most picky pillow person I know. He accidentally left it in a hotel and wasn’t able to get it back. He has fondly mentioned the pillow so many times, that I decided to get it for his birthday.

Things have certainly changed from the days when I would do anything for free stuff. I can definitely say I would have not agreed to do all this for a pillow now! I also don’t use Smiley360 anymore, due to crazy requirements like this.

And I cannot believe I wrote a whole post about a pillow without once mentioning exactly what the name of the pillow is. I took a guess and went with the Comforfit Pillow. It was still $90, so that better be the right one!