Twitter Contest Ideas: 6 games for Brands and Companies

These days, lots of com­pa­nies have a pres­ence on Twit­ter. Most of these com­pa­nies use it to share what’s going on in the com­pa­ny, which new prod­ucts they are launch­ing, and have a con­ver­sa­tion with their fol­low­ers. Oth­ers try to pro­voke inter­ac­tion by shar­ing inter­est­ing sto­ries and insights. But for most com­pa­nies, that’s about it. Only a small minor­i­ty dare ven­ture into the realm of Twit­ter con­tests and com­pe­ti­tions.

In this arti­cle we will explain six ideas for Twit­ter con­tests, and why these ideas might or might not be suit­able for your com­pa­ny.

Loyalty vs. Opportunism

Before we dive into the myr­i­ad of pos­si­ble con­tests to hold, let’s take a minute to con­sid­er. What are you hop­ing to gain from this com­pe­ti­tion? What is the aim you are try­ing to accom­plish?

• If your goal is to get as many new fol­low­ers as pos­si­ble, than this is the way for­ward. Con­tin­ue read­ing this arti­cle.
• If your goal is to build a last­ing rela­tion­ship with your cus­tomers, than a dif­fer­ent tac­tic might be required.

Ask your­self: which of these is best for me and my busi­ness?

Let’s Talk Prizes

If you are going to run a con­test, you will need cool prizes or it just won’t work. No-one will par­tic­i­pate if all they can win is a pen or stick­er with your com­pa­ny logo on them.

The prize(s) should be relat­ed to your busi­ness. A good idea would be a prod­uct you are sell­ing on your web­site, since it’s relat­ed to the top­ics you tweet about. This can assure your new fol­low­ers will be inter­est­ed in what you’re sell­ing, and you will have less ‘cheaters’ who just want a fan­cy prize.

What About The Rules?

Twit­ter specif­i­cal­ly men­tions what you can and can­not do in their Guide­lines for Con­tests on Twit­ter. Stick­ing to these guide­lines will prove par­tic­u­lar­ly help­ful if you’re new to the whole con­cept of Twit­ter. Vet­er­an users best keep this in mind:

• Don’t encour­age dupli­cate updates as mas­sive retweets (“spam”) are fil­tered out of Twit­ter search.
• Ask users to include a @reply to you in their update so you can see all the entries.

All of this sounds fair­ly obvi­ous, doesn’t it? Now let’s get to the good stuff!

Competition Ideas

Here is our overview of poten­tial ideas for run­ning con­tests on Twit­ter. Each idea tries to bal­ance the pros and cons of each. Remem­ber: there is no “best idea”. Dif­fer­ent busi­ness­es with dif­fer­ent fol­low­ers might get dif­fer­ent results with the same idea.

Follower Milestones

Every Xth fol­low­er gets a reward. In the Nether­lands, a trav­el agency gave away a pleas­ant day off for every 100th fol­low­er they reached. The sto­ry here is that fre­quent small­er prizes beat one big prize. It allows for more peo­ple to see your con­test and par­tic­i­pate in it.

• Pro: Attract a lot of new fol­low­ers fast with only rel­a­tive­ly small bud­get.
• Con: Your exist­ing fol­low­ers you may not be aware that you are hold­ing a con­test. The spam­mers out there might start tar­get­ing your account. Once you come close to the Xth fol­low­er, you will see a huge increase in num­ber of fol­low­ers, mak­ing it quite dif­fi­cult to fig­ure out who the legit­i­mate Xth fol­low­er was. Are you ready to deal with this?

Creative Replies

The most cre­ative par­tic­i­pant wins. After @StephenFry reached his 50.000th fol­low­er, he held a com­pe­ti­tion amongst his fol­low­ers to cel­e­brate the occa­sion. Peo­ple had to tweet a mes­sage using 50 L’s in one tweet, and the most cre­ative one won. It attract­ed a lot of bizarre entries, but was fun and got him thou­sands of new fol­low­ers in just a few days.

• Pro: If your idea gets a lot of atten­tion, it may become viral and you could see a huge return. In stead of hav­ing to retweet a bor­ing mes­sage, par­tic­i­pants can be orig­i­nal and have fun in the process. Word of advice: be sure to set up some good track­ing in advance.
• Con: Viral cam­paign? You will attract spam­mers. Lim­it­ed fol­low­ers? Your con­test might not get seen and may not deliv­er the results you were hop­ing for.

RT for Reward

Fol­low­ers retweet a mes­sage and receive a prize. A job adver­tis­er in Bel­gium used this tac­tic to spread its mes­sage in return for free film tick­ets. You can give some­thing to all par­tic­i­pants, or draw a win­ner from every­one who joined.

• Pro: One of the eas­i­est ways to give your mes­sage a max­i­mum of vis­i­bil­i­ty.
• Con: It is not a gen­uine way to inter­act with your fol­low­ers and may cost you some good fans. Also, Twit­ter doesn’t like this tac­tic. (See ‘Rules’ above.)

Twitaway

A give­away on Twit­ter: some­one fol­lows you, and in return you share some­thing of val­ue. For online mar­ket­ing agen­cies this might be a free PDF down­load of your lat­est whitepa­per. Alter­na­tive­ly, FMCG com­pa­nies could con­sid­er giv­ing away online coupons.

• Pro: You’ll only attract peo­ple inter­est­ed in your prod­uct and  may stand to gain some inter­est­ing fol­low­ers.
• Con: Invest in an auto­mat­ed sys­tem if you expect a lot of inter­est or you could end up send­ing every sin­gle direct mes­sage your­self.

Trivia

Send peo­ple on a search through your web­site to find some­thing hid­den. This type of con­test requires a judge to go through all entries and select the real­ly cre­ative or fun­ny answers. A win­ner is drawn from all par­tic­i­pants who found the right answer, prefer­ably with­in 24 hours.

• Pro: It’s chal­leng­ing and fun. Peo­ple inter­act with your web­site. And with only a lim­it­ed time to play, par­tic­i­pants don’t have to wait too long for the results.
• Con: Some prepa­ra­tion is required on your web­site. Also, cheaters may find the answer by scan­ning your time­line.

Second One is Free

Reward loy­al cus­tomers with a sec­ond item they can share. If you are a writer, ask peo­ple to share the pur­chase tick­et of your book via Twit­ter. In return you send them a sec­ond, signed copy of the book which they may give to a friend. You can lim­it the num­ber of par­tic­i­pants by ask­ing for a moti­va­tion before choos­ing a win­ner.

• Pro: This con­cept is not too pushy. Peo­ple aren’t oblig­at­ed to par­tic­i­pate. It allows you to reward real fans, while at the same time ensur­ing your prod­uct reach­es more peo­ple.
• Con: Mak­ing users dis­close per­son­al infor­ma­tion on Twit­ter is not easy. Best to han­dle things per direct mes­sage or via e‑mail.