There are very few people who are on Twitter and who have not taken part in a contest of some type or another. This is a big trend on all social media sites like Instagram, Pinterest and Facebook along with Twitter so it is not like they are not everywhere these days. If you have a company on Twitter, and if you don’t you should, then you can run your own contest to build brand awareness and name recognition for your company. There are certain rules and regulations that have to be adhered to in order to keep your contest up and running. If you don’t follow the rules then you could have your contest pulled and your company could lose credibility. The following are some tips for having a contest on Twitter.
Have a Solid Plan
Before you post your contest then you need to have a solid plan so you don’t have any repercussions from Twitter and you are not putting your business on the line. The first thing you need to have is a gift or giveaway for the winner of the contest. You don’t want to have a prize that is too valuable for tax purposes and because people live in different states this regulation can be different from state to state. Also, a prize that seems too good to be true is usually thought to be a scam and people will not participate in the contest. After choosing the prize then you need to check out the state and federal laws to see if your contest is within the boundaries of those laws.
Getting the Contest Started
Not only do you need to promote your contest on Twitter, but you also need to post on your other social media sites, your website and also your blog. Any time you create a tweet about the event you have to have a link to the contest rules so all who participate can read them at their leisure. It is not possible to post all of the contest rules in one tweet because of the limited number of characters that you’re allowed on the site. Make sure that you continue to post reminders about your contest by either retweeting the original contest announcement or by rewording your tweets when you offer these reminders. Twitter does not approve of any tweets that seem spammy so if you don’t reword the tweet you could get flagged by the site.
Chose a Contest End Time
When the time is getting close to the end of the contest you need to remind your followers that they only have a little time left to take part. While those who joined and participated in the contest early may not like having more competition, it is important that you offer these reminders. The only followers that this won’t affect are those that you bought when you first opened your Twitter account to get your numbers higher. It is much easier to offer reminders than it is to deal with angry followers who were not aware of the ending time of the contest. You can handle this by posting something similar to: “last day to enter the contest”.
Once your contest is over you can announce the winner and have them send their information directly to your direct message inbox.
Sharon Thomas has been blogging about Twitter for four years and is considered an expert.