How to Create a Promotional Twitter Contest

Creating twitter contests is a great way to expand the online presence of whatever it is you are trying to promote. These promotions and contests create free publicity for your brand, by spreading through word of mouth (or tweet!) to new audiences, and creates incentives for people to tweet at you. This can get you more followers, more hits on your websites, and a stronger reputation online. Here are the cardinal rules for creating a successful twitter promotional contest:

Make Sure Your Audience is Big Enough to Begin With.

If you do not have a big enough audience to begin with, your twitter contest might not be successful. You want to make sure your twitter following is big enough that the dispersal is worth the effort. If your brand only has 100 followers on twitter and each follower only has 25 followers each, chances of your contest catching on are not very high. If you have a large number of followers, chances of people entering the contest are much higher and your efforts will not be wasted.

Target Power Tweeters.

If you have power tweeters following you religiously, chances are your contest will have a wider reach than if you do not have people following you with great influence. For example, any time power tweeters like Kim Kardashian or Justin Bieber tweet about anything, millions of people stay tuned and check in. A brand’s twitter contest dream would be for a power tweeter to mention their contest once to get people to hype up the contest and therefore, the brand.

Take Advantage of the Hashtags.

The best thing that could happen is for your contest to be a top trend on twitter. Create hashtags and specialized messages that are UNIFORM so that they show up in searches and hopefully on twitter trends. What is a hashtag you may ask? Well, a hashtag is that special little # before a message that creates a link on twitter (ex: #message). In addition, make the contest enterer mention your twitter name. For example: "I want a free iPad @ABCtechcompany #ABCiPadcontest." is an example of a generic twitter contest tweet that combines both the mention of the twitter username and the hashtag indicates they want to enter the contest.

Track. Track. Track!

You want to make sure you can track the people that tweet to enter your contest. It is important to make it legitimate. Tools like HootSuite can create filtered feeds that contain certain keywords. Make that specific hashtag that people have to add to their tweet the keyword that you filter through to keep track. There are also other products (not all are free) that you can pay for that will track these contests for you.

Make Sure the Rewards Outweigh the Costs.

If you are giving out an iPad, make sure that the rewards from your contest are greater than the cost of the iPad itself. This does not have to be a monetary value (even though that is the easiest way to measure it). It can be through new twitter followers, new sign ups to your website, sales (record sales for a musician, etc.), or any other type of measurable increase to your brand that eventually will bring greater profits.

Think of it like the winning of a car at a casino: the more you gamble, the more of a chance you have at winning a brand new car. However, the casino will gain more customers, more money and more exposure to justify giving away a car (or else they wouldn’t do it). The allure of the chance of winning the new car (or any other prize for example) and the potential for new customers, is enough to outweigh the cost of the car itself for the casino.

Some final thoughts: You want to make sure to keep it legitimate and make sure that you set an end date of the contest (or else it is a more arbitrary contest that might seem questionable). Twitter contests are great for getting more customers and getting your brand out (whether you are a person or a business). Your twitter contest will be a success of you make sure to follow these rules!