Kevin from KidsDesk.net asks: Do Twitter Giveaways work? While it’s hard to get actual numbers from Twitter giveaways and contests, they do seem to work for most of the businesses that use them. Here are some guidelines and tips to avoid breaking Twitter’s terms of service and to make the giveaway work…
What’s Your Goal?
Is your goal to increase awareness of your website? To signup for a newsletter? Figure out what you want to ask people to do to enter the giveaway. Most Twitter giveaways just have people follow and then retweet about the contest – meaning their goal is to increase followers, which is fine, just keep that goal in mind if you have something else you’d like to do.
Don’t Anger Twitter
Make sure you follow Twitter’s Guidelines for Running a Contest on Twitter. Don’t have the same thing tweeted over and over again (duplicate tweets from the same person is a no-no) – let people enter only once. Don’t encourage the creation of multiple accounts – make a statement that using multiple accounts will cause disqualification. It’ll probably easier to track entries if your username is included in the tweet (have them include @yourname).
Work on Your Tweets First
Your profile needs to already have interesting tweets if you want people to continue to follow you after the giveaway (if you’re having them follow as part of the contest). This is where the 80-20 rule comes into play: 80% of your tweets should be informative and interesting to your audience (and not be about you), then 20% can be about your blog posts and promotions (and what you had for lunch, although that’s not interesting to most people, except maybe your mom).
Don’t Be Annoying
Set guidelines that limit the annoyance of the giveaway to your audience (and to the followers of people who will be playing). Don’t run contests very often. And keep the contest short. 1-3 days is about the limit of people’s attention.
Worthwhile Giveaway
In order for people to be willing to enter the giveaway, it has to be something worthwhile. It looks like at least $50-$100 for smaller businesses – and probably something tangible instead of a discount on your products.
Use Your Network
In order for contests to be successful, they need to be seen by those who have active followers. This means you’ll probably want to reach out to some key influencers in your network and ask them to retweet your contest tweets.
Conclusion
I’ve seen some fairly successful Twitter contests by both larger and smaller companies. The key seems to be running the contest in a responsible way with a giveaway that is valuable to the audience.
If you’ve run a successful Twitter contest or giveaway, we’d love to hear how it went for you – what tips do you have?
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