Winning Big: 4 great Twitter competition ideas

Sweepstakes

This type of competition is very straight forward and requires minimal effort. Getting engagement on Twitter is difficult, especially if you ask for user-generated content straight away. It’s much easier to ask people to follow you and retweet. In doing, you’ll slowly build up a community. Running a sweepstake is the best way to get started when it comes to competitions because it’s easy for people.  You can organise different kinds of sweepstakes, depending on your brand’s goals. A quick way to run a sweepstake is by asking your followers to retweet to win, where you’ll then pick the winners at random. For example, a restaurant could say they are giving away free meals and those who retweet will be in with a chance of winning. Another way you can run Twitter sweepstakes is by including a link to your website where people can submit their email address. Later, you can draw the winner from your database of participants’ details.

Twitter Poll

A question and answer is a classic on social media. Create an interesting question and make a poll so people can tap on their preferred answer, which will be displayed as a vote. This is a very simple campaign. The winners can be selected in a sweepstake from the correct answers, or from who answered the quickest. The key is to make your questions are as creative as possible. A fashion brand, for example, could ask their audience to guess their best-selling product from a few options. Don’t be afraid to ask questions that puzzle your audience, as it’s an excellent way to grab your audience’s attention and create excitement around it.

Hashtag contest

Hashtag contests can significantly boost brand awareness and there are multiple ways you can run this type of campaign. Ask a question and get your audience to reply to the tweet by using your chosen hashtag. You can track their answers using the hashtag tracking tool. Make the hashtag engaging and relevant to your brand. So, if you’re a food company, you could post a hashtag like #SolveHunger. Make it catchy to bring your audience’s attention to your competition.

Photo contest

With photo contests, you have the opportunity to be as creative as you want. As this requires user-generated content, this competition should come after you have already asked people to retweet and follow you. By this point, you would have slowly eased your audience into engaging with your brand, so they will more likely make the effort to enter your photo contest.

The best thing about a photo competition is that everyone can get involved. Before you start your contest, decide what type of photo you want people to post. Make it fun and relevant to your business. Choose a contest prize that has value to your followers like a specific product from your brand. Then promote your contest on Twitter and make the entry requirements clear, explaining what they’ll win and what the photo should be of. If you’re a tech company, consider asking your followers to tweet a photo of one of your latest devices. Be sure to tweet your contest several times and measure your results.