In addition to spreading the word and getting people talking about your company, a Twitter contest may help you get new followers and expand your reach.
Others even claim that Twitter competitions increase participation more so than any other (paid) online investment.
1. Think outside the box
The ‘creative answer’ method often involves participants responding to a question posed by the event’s organisers with a hashtag. Winners will be picked based on how imaginative their responses are.
This approach has been used successfully for years in offline media, where participants are generally tasked with coming up with a unique response in a predetermined number of words (50 words, 100 words, 200 words, and so on). The character limit on Tweets made it easy for contest organisers to switch to this style.
2. Sweepstakes, n.
A sweepstakes is a type of contest in which the winners are selected by a lottery-style drawing. Sweepstakes can also take the following formats:
Firstly, RT for a chance to win.
It’s a Twitter contest, and it’s one of the most popular ones. To enter and be eligible for prizes, contestants must, as the name implies, Retweet. Winners will be selected at random after the contest period has concluded. Such a competition is quite easy to organise.
a. By Hand
Contestants can easily participate by Retweeting a single tweet posted by the organisers on Twitter.
One major drawback is that the contest organisers will be constrained in their ability to disseminate information due to Twitter’s 140-character restriction. Contest rules, length, and reward information may be provided on a dedicated landing page, or on the host site’s blog. The selection of winners will be difficult as well, since organisers would need to either manually copy and paste the names of contestants or utilise a random number generator like random.org.
b. Usefulness
If a company wants to run a Twitter contest (including, but not limited to, a “Retweet to Win” campaign), they can utilise an app. Binkd, a user-friendly marketing platform, has released a free Twitter contest tool, making it easier than ever for businesses to host branded Twitter contests. Users may create a landing page branded with their company’s logo and detailing the contest’s rules and prize offerings using the app. Once the competition ends, a random number generator will select a winner. The risks associated with holding a contest without a designated entry form can be avoided.
c. Adopt to Thrive
Several companies use the requirement that contestants follow them to expand their fan base. They need just follow or retweet and follow your account. When the contest has concluded, winners will be selected at random. Here’s a Twitter contest being run by @hairdazzle.
3. Third, a Picture Contest
The value of an image on Twitter far exceeds that of the 140 characters allowed for its description. Users submit photos for a chance to win a prize, which may be anything from a modest token to a discount on a future purchase. It will be up to the organisers to decide who wins the “creative answer” contest, too. An event that may be considered a competition is the following: British tapas spot @LaTasca recently rewarded diners who tweeted photos of their meal with a £50 La Tasca gift card.
4. Answering Your Questions
An event in which participants are asked and then expected to answer questions is simple. Those who answer the question posted by the contest’s organisers on Twitter the quickest, most accurately, or by some other means would be declared the winners
This isn’t the most creative form of contest, but if you do it often enough, it may keep people coming back to your Twitter page to see if there are any new random questions.
While Twitter makes it simple to organise a contest, it’s also possible for participants to game the system by, say, creating many accounts in order to increase their odds of winning. You run the risk of having your contest appear like spam if hashtags are misused.