Has anyone had experience with a Twitter competition?

[BarnyB]

Hi there guys,

Just wondered if I could pick some brains here.

We're a new shop and we're thinking about launching a competition on Twitter/Facebook, to create a bit of awareness of our site. To enter - retweet our message (something shamelessly self promoting) and then also follow us, sort of thing. We'd make up a prize up of a selection of our products.

Are there any barriers that I should be aware of when starting the campaign/picking a winner?

Has anyone had any experience with this kind of competition? Positive and negative points are all welcome! I've got very little experience with Twitter, and its all a bit new to me (got a little bit more experience of Facebook but not much!).

Thanks very much,

Barny.

[zigojacko]

A Twitter competition works well, you want to take a look at Namecheaps comps, on the hour, every hour they tweet a themed question and to enter you need to be following them, the first to reply correctly wins a domain and two others selected at random also win a domain.

What would the prizes be? Random gifts?

You have hardly any followers on Twitter at present, would take a while to get it off the ground with an empty account unless you get a lot of website traffic where you can set up a fixed banner at the bottom of your website (so it's always in view without scrolling) to encourage followers on your Twitter account, failing that you would be best to hire a social media marketer who has the knowledge and understanding of reaching out to thousands of people instantly.

Your website is nice though so that's a good start.

[BarnyB]

Thanks for the input zigojacko, its much appreciated. Yes we'd take a selection of our products and put them together to create a prize.

Or just thinking out loud now, I wonder if we could maybe put a spin on the birthday gift theme - something along the lines of 'Had your birthday? Fancy another one? Every week we'll be re-creating a birthday for someone by sending them a present!' A bit mouthy for a tweet though..

Thanks for the advice to find a social media marketer - have no problems letting someone who knows what they're doing lead the way! Is this a service that you offer? Or would have a recommendation too?

Thanks again for taking the time to reply.

[1weekSEO]

Hi and welcome

I'm a self confessed Twitter addict and have experience of running several styles of Twitter competitions weekly over the past 6 months.

I don't want to link for the sake of it, so DM me and I'll send you a link to a Twitter competition blog I have been reposnsible for.

Use the hashtags #win #free #competition and you'll have hundreds of followers in a matter of days I promise.

Hope to hear from you soon.

[efficiencycoach]

twitter competitions can work really well - I've never run one myself, but are a great way of building awareness. If you have a prize of intrinsic value - e.g. free twitter background, IPod Touch, this can work very well.

Remember to add Pls RT to your competition tweets - as this generates more RTs than without.

It helps if you have a reasonable following to start with - or know someone who has a large following who is happy to help you, put out a few tweets.

Have a blog post which the competition tweets links back to - so that people can see what it is all about. Keep the competition simple - i.e. ask people to RT the competition tweet to enter. The harder you make it for people to enter, the more unlikely it is for people to tweet about your competition.

Good Luck!

[1weekSEO]

twitter competitions can work really well - I've never run one myself, but are a great way of building awareness.

How do you measure awareness of a Twitter competition if you have never run one?

[efficiencycoach]

Good point well made - my observation is from my own reaction & participation in competitions which I would never normally indulge.

I also get to see a lot of tweet flying around & often see the competition tweets getting retweeted. It's anecdotal evidence I know...

[BrightIdeas]

Depending on the prize(s) offered, you might want to consider running the competition on your website instead. The advantages are that you can build up your email list while generating a few links to your site.

For my online shop, I originally considered a Twitter competiton but changed this to a website one in the end for the reasons stated above.

[MartBrooks]

We do antibodyMX tshirt giveaways on twitter every now and again. We've had a few people sign up as a direct response to that.