Anyone ran a Twitter competition before?

[BrightIdeas]

Does anyone have any experience of running Twitter competitions? If so, I'd be interested to hear how you did with it!

We are launching our B2C website in April, but have a 'prelaunch' site, which I wanted to use as a platform for pre-launch marketing activity.
I was planning on running a Twitter competition in March where I'm giving away vouchers for use on site when it launches. My objectives are (a) building up a Twitter following and creating a bit of a buzz (b) to start to drive traffic and build links to website.

Has anyone been successful with this kind of thing?

[QVA - Emma]

Facebook is better for B2C depending on your product - I would look into that. But look up facts on running online competitions before you go ahead :)

Plus if it's a competition and you want backlinks - put a little one on moneysavingexpert forums and watch them come a flooding.:)

Regards

Emma

[BrightIdeas]

Facebook is better for B2C depending on your product - I would look into that. But look up facts on running online competitions before you go ahead :)

Plus if it's a competition and you want backlinks - put a little one on moneysavingexpert forums and watch them come a flooding.:)

Regards

Emma

Don't you need fans on Facebook first though?

[QVA - Emma]

Yep - but you also need followers on Twitter. You have time to possibly do both. Facebook ads to promote you page are pretty cheap and you can target the exact users you are looking for on your ad campaign.

I did a similar thing for charity at Christmas, once 100 or so people join you will find more join automatically from peoples status', word of mouth, competition links etc.

Emma

[BrightIdeas]

Yep - but you also need followers on Twitter. You have time to possibly do both. Facebook ads to promote you page are pretty cheap and you can target the exact users you are looking for on your ad campaign.

I did a similar thing for charity at Christmas, once 100 or so people join you will find more join automatically from peoples status', word of mouth, competition links etc.

Emma

It's been pretty easy to gain followers on Twitter so far, although I don't really think that the followers so far are target audience for the competition (i.e. potential customers) - which is why I'm concerned that it might not be the right platform...

Will definitely look into FB advertising... Think you're right!

[Danny@BFC]

I ran a twitter one last year for some pairs of tickets to the baby show, best to put "RT & Follow to enter" fast way of getting an audience - not the most targeted but a free starting point to promote your site to when you launch.

Based on QVA - Emma's comments however I'm going to check out facebook as I sell a B2C baby product.....

[QVA - Emma]

I ran a twitter one last year for some pairs of tickets to the baby show, best to put "RT & Follow to enter" fast way of getting an audience - not the most targeted but a free starting point to promote your site to when you launch.

Based on QVA - Emma's comments however I'm going to check out facebook as I sell a B2C baby product.....

Just make sure you set your target audience and use your keywords! Perhaps think about setting up a group too if you sell baby products. Do a search for baby stuff or your product etc on Facebook and see what pages pop up. Never go in blind.:)

Emma

[1weekSEO]

I run Twitter competitions all the time, and January ran a free pocket diary giveaway - all people had to do was register their details with our site - no purchase necessary. This was to gather data for future promotions.

Here's an article I wrote a little while back [Ezine Article] (http://ezinearticles.com/?Twitter-Basics---How-to-Make-Twitter-Work-For-Your-Business&id=3241684)

I now interact on a daily basis and look as if I am going to hit the 4 figure followers mark this week after 10 weeks of Twitter. There's one thing I should add about cleansing your followers list to people who only want to promote themselves and have no chance of coverting, to illustrate I dumped 40-odd followers last week who are all USA based - the site I am promoting is UK based and has a 99% UK customer base despite the fact we ship worldwide, basic research and gives obvious facts backing up simple industry and competitor knowlege.

You need quality followers, not quantity freeloaders.

Here's a link to show you what I have done in the past week [here] (http://funkypigeon-competition.blogspot.com/)

Last week there was a surge of people buying from us as a competitor website stopped taking orders. We had real time feedback, help and discount codes which proved the most responsive and interactive experience to date.

If you already haven't, download free Tweetdeck and search for columns with keywords superceded with a hash - I have #competition, #freebie #discount, #coupon, #bristol, #somerset for example.

Any further queries please DM me

Best regards and good luck
Nina

[dots and spots Jeff]

We've run a few online 'giveaways' (not competitions - subtle, but important (I think!) difference) and we were just discussing doing our next one via Twitter just this morning.

We used a Facebook giveaway to gain a number of Facebook fans - we announced that anyone who was a Facebook fan would be entered for a draw for a giveaway of one of our products. Gained us a number of new fans.

Have done a similar giveaway whereby people needed to comment on our blog to be eneterd for the draw.

Want to do a Twitter give away now, but not sure how to work the mechanics of it. Essentially we'll tweet something like this:

" RT this to be entered into a free draw to win one of these: [link to item on our website]"

My problem is, how do we find everyone who retweets our message? Twitter only tells you 100 retwetters, and I'm hoping for more.

Any thoughts?

Jeff

[1weekSEO]

My problem is, how do we find everyone who retweets our message? Twitter only tells you 100 retwetters, and I'm hoping for more.

Jeff, download Tweetdeck and spend a day interacting with it.

TD will be a bit TMI and overwhelming at first, but I now run it all day and the little responses in the corner of my screen allow me to work all day and keep an eye out on reponses.

I have columns set up for 'funkypigeon' and mentions of '@thefunkypigeon'

These allow me to follow re tweeters and thank them personally by replying to their tweets

Also, just asking tweeters to RT (retweet) your giveaway does not achieve a marketing target, hence mine usually say 'follow and RT' as well as a response required 'join us on Facebook' "register for a free diary" and 'leave a comment' meaning you can actually judge the winner on the amount of effort they have put in.

Please see my earlier links and view comments on the blog & FB. You will be amazed by the interaction.

Here's a link to show you what I have done in the past week [here] (http://funkypigeon-competition.blogspot.com/)

Our current FB page is running the same comp for people without a blogger ID, look at the replies [here] (http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/Funkypigeon-wwwfunkypigeoncom-personalised-greetings-cards-and-gifts/161953779223?ref=ts)

[1weekSEO]

Also we have doubled out FB fans and Twitter followers in the last 3 weeks by daily interaction at intervals throughout the day.

These are only quality people interested in buying our products and winning our prizes. I unfollow blatent self promotion, and do not blatently self promote more than 30% of the time. People are interested in the real me / pigeon, and chat like you would do with friends. Building relationships is crucial, especially with people who have 2k followers, if they retweet you broaden your message to the next level.

Please do take time to read my 3 golden rules of Twitter in my article, it took me only a couple of weeks to get into the swing of things. I promise it's worth it.

I also ask for feedback to be added to our site site, apparantly we have saved the bacon of a few people and [quote] "have their lifetime custom" which is amazing for a free network...

[QVA - Emma]

All good advice - if you have the time initially to set up the compo and just want to monitor the progress, you could try scocialoomph.com may save you a lot of time. :)

Emma

[BrightIdeas]

Hello again!

Nina, that's really interesting - well done! I read your posts with much interest and will be taking on board all your comments. I certainly am hoping to start interacting much more soon.

I did a Google search for FB promotions and they appear to be very stingent with their rules:

http://www.facebook.com/promotions_guidelines.php

They state you need to go through an approval process. Did anyone who used FB for promos do this?

Look forward to hearing your replies.

[BrightIdeas]

All good advice - if you have the time initially to set up the compo and just want to monitor the progress, you could try scocialoomph.com may save you a lot of time. :)

Emma

Thanks :). That site looks very good - have you used it? If so, have you used the free or professional version?

[Wendy.Rule]

Hi,

For something a little different, we ran a twitter competition through a company/site relevant to Capsule CRM. They promoted our product at the same time as running the competition, where all applicants posted a response to our twitter account - the prize was a free account on Capsule.

This worked really well with lots of postings to our twitter account.

Kind rgds, Wendy

[1weekSEO]

I did a Google search for FB promotions and they appear to be very stingent with their rules:

http://www.facebook.com/promotions_guidelines.php



Nah never bothered. I'm not aware of any company who has suffered a penalty or similar. MyVoucherCodes.co.uk run comps all the time on facebook asking people to share a message and get friends to join etc

Will look at those in more detail later

[QVA - Emma]

Thanks :). That site looks very good - have you used it? If so, have you used the free or professional version?

Hi I use the free version currently (must confess I haven't used it since before Christmas been a bit slack myself in that department:eek:).

I'm planning to upgrade so I cna intergrate my blog etc into it plus Facebook.

BUT if you only use automated Tweets and don't interact with your followers you may find that they drop off quite quickly and it all becomes a bit spammy.:)

Emma

[Danny@BFC]

Hi Nina,

Wanted to say thanks, had tweetdeck for a while, had no idea just how powerful it was as never looked into it properly, based on your advice here I'm now able to manage it much better, spend less time with it yet be more efficient. excellent!

So thank you :-)

Danny

[1weekSEO]

Hi Danny pleased I could help :)

Anything else please feel free to ask..