How To Run A Twitter Promotion

Twitter is a great platform to run promotions and contests to gain additional customers and increase brand recognition. The fact is twitter promotions  do in fact grab more attention, traction, and followers (if done properly)

Before running your own twitter promotional campaigns there are some important things to consider while creating and structuring the promotion.

Define your goals at the onset of your campaign.

• Why are you running the Twitter promotion?


• Are you trying to gain more followers?


• Why are you trying to gain more followers?


• Are you trying to drive in-store traffic?


• Are you trying to increase your online sales?


• Are you trying to build brand awareness?

Just doing a twitter promotion because you are part of the ‘me too’ crowd is not a valid business goal. Do a quick cost benefit analysis. Social media metrics can be hard to come by but check out CSPenn's presentation from the Inbound Marketing Summit on Social Media ROI 101.

Different Types of Twitter promotions

Once you've figured out why you want to run promotions on Twitter, it's now time to figure out how you want to go about it. There are many different models you could follow.

• Follow Us Campaigns – The main goal here is to increase followers by offering a prize drawing to followers at a given point in time.


• Twitter Trivia Campaigns – Another way to gain followers, buzz, and brand evangelists by holding regular trivia games.


• Retweet This Campaigns – Raffle based on random drawing from retweeters


• Geographic Based – pushing out coupons, free gift cards, and the like in an effort to drive in store traffic


• Cross-platform Contest – A campaign to push users to the other social media platforms you inhabit. Leverage traditional media here as well.

Best Practices for Setting up Twitter Promotions

Twitter Trivia

• Have entry rules (based on the prize and goals of the campaign):
  
  
  
  • “To play our trivia game you must be following us”
  
  
  • “@Companyname trivia at 2pm. winner gets an ipod touch! To play our trivia game make sure you retweet this message by 2pm”
  
  
  • “Entrants must be within a specific geographic location”
  
  
  
  


• Try and make the question revolve somehow around your brand or product.


• Make sure the questions are harder than just a quick Google search. This will ensure more people will try or will dig deeper into your brand or products subject material. Questions about images work well.


• Have a time limit on answers for trivia. Allow time for your message to be retweeted and spread far and wide.
  
  
  
  • “Retweet this message and answer the question by 2pm to win prize #twittertrivia”
  
  
  
  


• Having the first answer win can work but do not announce the winner immediately. Let other people answer your question first to spread your Twitter username and message.


• Apply a #hashtag to your contest that is appropriate

Related articles and resources

• Twitter Best Practice: follow everyone as curtesy. hang-on. no, actually don't.


• Business Promotion through Social Media


• Best Practices for Twittering your brand


• Social Media Marketing - Get Your Customers To Review Your Business