Twitter contests can be a great way of getting you or your brand noticed in the Twittersphere. Yes, they can be annoying when everyone is spamming retweets left and right, but who doesn’t love having the chance of winning a Macbook Pro or an LCD TV for 2 seconds of work?
Explosive Twitter contest campaigns like the one launched by site builder Moonfruit (@moontweet) rocked the twitter world (the UK company used twitter to give out 10 macbooks over the course of 10 days). In fact, there was even evidence that Twitter censored the #moonfruit hashtag used for the contest because it was getting too popular for its own good! Till this day (months after the contest has been over), people are still adding #moonfruit into their tweets.
Trying to emulate Moonfruit’s success, many other twitter users have launched similar contests. Let’s look at one of them right now:
Business phone service provider OnSIP (@onsip) launched their own twitter contest a few hours ago, pledging to give out 2 Netbooks to those who retweeted about the contest. How many more followers have they gotten? I count 5. Not 5000. Not 500. Not 50.
Just 5.
Wait, are you telling me that only 5 people in the twitter world want a free netbook? That’s pretty hard to swallow…
Well if that’s not the case, then what could they have done differently? Here are some suggestions and observations for their twitter campaign and any future twitter contests you may plan on holding.
1) Twitter contests rely on momentum. If you tweet something and its retweeted by active followers who also have active followers, then great–you’re already halfway there. If that’s not the case, then your contest can die extremely quickly, and you’re left in an awkward position wondering what went wrong. If you currently, don’t have a very active twitter follower base, then try to see if you can host your contest on the site of a friend who does have one. On twitter, one really popular tweeter makes all the difference.
2) Recognizable prizes. Moonfruit was a phenomenal success. Why? Well partially because they said they were going to give away 10 Macbooks. Pretty much everyone in the Twitterverse without one wants one. One misstep OnSIP might have committed is the decision to go with netbooks. A lot of the population may still be unfamiliar with the term.
If you don’t have the funds to offer such lavish prizes, then I would suggest giving away something else you know your followers will value. For example, discounts or special offers for followers. A lot of contests also pledge to give out a bigger prize once a certain follower count has been reached. For example, @onsip pledges to give away another Netbook if they reach 1000 followers.
3) KISS. No–don’t offer kisses. KISS stands for Keep It Simple Stupid. Don’t make people jump through hoops to enter your contest. Moonfruit’s contest essentially consisted of asking people to follow their twitter, and add “#moonfruit” to their tweets. That’s it. Asking people to tweet you their social security number, mother’s date of birth, and favorite color is a no-no.
So there you have it. 3 basic rules to follow. I’m not promising you you’ll get 100000 followers if you do just those things, but at least it will get you started in the right direction.
And good luck to @onsip. Right now if you enter their twitter contest, you have around a 40% chance of winning a Netbook. 
@NewsNeus
Thanks for your reflexions!
I would add another isue to be sonsidered:
-Be honest on your offers/information/links
I am still receiving tweets that seem to be offering links to posts and Webs of education, debates or political news…
But they direct you to a commercial page, to an account in Amazone or to pages with horoscopes!! >:-(
@NotAProBlog
While I do agree that these types of Twitter contests (when done well) can see your follower count go dramatically up… at what point do you consider the fact that you’re inspiring your followers to overload their streams?
Twitter contests are great when you’re *in* it or running it… but for the people who aren’t and don’t care – sometimes it can be an awful headache!
@lenkendall
In regards to number 3, I’ll say this only works realistically if you have a small brand. Fortune 500 companies will rarely go about a contest so simply whether on Twitter or other social networks because it makes them too open to lawsuits. In theory, you’re right, simple is better, but unfortunately our legal system doesn’t encourage this.
I completely agree with #3. I’ve seen Twitter contests that direct you to a link, which asks that you retweet, follow, blog, comment, etc. in order to register. While in some cases, this gives you a better “chance” of winning, I think Moonfruit asking for users to include #moonfruit on any and all tweets was genius. This way, users are still using Twitter as they normally would, but just adding an additional 10 characters, in hopes of winning a Macbook. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
@kristoforlawson
Good advice. I have just listed my own competition but on the advice of another blogger I decided to ask people to not only follow my twitter account but to sign up to my newsletter and leave a comment. The prize would be a DSLR camera if I can get my follower count over 30,000.
It might prove to not be a successful competition, which I am perfectly OK with, but I think it will be interesting to see just how much you can ask people to do depending on what is at stake. If I don’t get 30,000 followers I will still be giving away prizes. they just wont be as big. I figure it as an incentive for people to tweet about my competition.
You can see the comp at http://ow.ly/Obs1
@WelcomeCards
Great post! I’ve run multiple contests & giveaways since joining twitter, all with the same prize, a set of You’re Welcome Cards. I’d have to say that #1 is the most important. If you get the right follower (or group of followers) to retweet your contest, you’re far more likely to get more tweets, retweets and followers. Obviously #2 can also play a huge factor in getting the contest to spread, as if I were giving away a MacBook Air or some large prize, I can almost guarantee that I would have gained more followers than I have in giving away You’re Welcome Cards. All in all though, Twitter has given us a great new outlet to get the word out about our cards, and more than anything, we’ve gotten a very good response thus far!
@tweetswin
#2 – Sometimes the prize value has nothing to do with the success of a giveaway. Here are two examples:
http://tweetswin.com/results/551/ – a jar of jam, less than a day, 23 entries and 12 new followers.
http://tweetswin.com/results/398 – $3 poster, 124 entries, over 200 followers gained.
So for #1 – You can also list your Twitter contest or giveaway on a site like http://www.tweetswin.com for free, and gain access to the 8,000 followers participating there.