Twitter Promotions

Contests and sweepstakes are run on various social media platforms all the time, and Twitter is no exception. Twitter contests are a simple and effective way to capture your target audience’s attention and gain valuable user-generated content.

Promotions offer increased engagement, seeing as contests and sweepstakes can inspire people to come to you to see what you’re offering (as opposed to you reaching out to them), as well as increased exposure, aka virality that makes customers love the experience of entering the contest and therefore WANT to share it.

Twitter contests and sweepstakes also help your business build strong email lists. Twitter contests can be an effective form of lead generation because, if you convince people they’re getting something in exchange for sharing their email address (in this case, the chance to win a prize), they’re likely to share. On Twitter, prizes are most commonly awarded to users for tweeting a particular update, following a particular account, or posting updates with a specific hashtag.

If you want to host a contest or promotion on Twitter, there are also a few basic guidelines to follow.

1. Discourage creating multiple accounts – Individuals who create more than one account to enter a contest will most likely get their account suspended. In your post, you should state that anyone who uses multiple accounts to enter will be ineligible.
2. Discourage posting the same tweet more than once – “Posting duplicate, or near duplicate, updates or links is a violation of the Twitter Rules and jeopardizes search quality,” Twitter states. Therefore, don’t ask users to tweet duplicate updates.
3. Make sure contestants mention you – Twitter recommends having users mention you in their updates. If they don’t, you’ll have a hard time finding everyone who participated in the promotion, whereas if you’re mentioned in tweets, you will see the updates in your notifications.
4. Use topics relevant to the contest – Twitter encourages users to include relevant hashtag topics/recommended hashtags with the updates. If you encourage users to add your hashtag to unrelated content, it may inadvertently cause them to violate Twitter Rules.

Of course, it is always recommended to read all of the Twitter Rules before starting your promotion. Don’t have time for that? Don’t worry. At American, we are up to date on the law and rules surrounding promotions on all social media platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and more.

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