Tuesday 10 June 2014

Promoting a competition via Twitter



If done well, promoting a competition via Twitter can be a great way to:

  • reach new audiences quickly, and encourage them to follow you
  • persuade others to re-tweet your information
  • drive traffic to your other communication channels such as your website of Facebook page.
Here are some points to consider if promoting a competition via Twitter:

     1.  Create a #hashtag for your competition. This will allow you to easily see who has re-tweeted you, and what the sentiment of conversation around your competition is.

2.  Don’t rely on the Twitter search facility to be able to see all comments and re-tweets – it will only show you the last 7 days (correct as of June 2014). If your competition runs for longer than this, and a condition of entry is a re-tweet or commenting using your #hashtag – how are you going to successfully track entries?

3.  Provide a link to your terms and conditions. Entrants should know where to find details of the competition conditions of entry, closing dates, and so on.

4.  Beware professional compers! Some people set up Twitter accounts specifically for the purposes of competition entry. If you acquire a lot of such followers it can dilute your core of quality subject related followers.

5.  Don’t forget to maximise the online exposure that your competition generates, after the closing date. Tweet the completion results, and encourage the winner and their network of friends to do the same. Ask them, for example, to post a picture of the prize. Encourage the winner to promote your next competition, and so on.


6.   Don't forget to follow the winner of your competition, on Twitter, so that they can contact you with a Direct Message - they will be expecting to be able to do this!