How to Launch a Successful Twitter Promotion

In a recent issue of Internet Retailer Magazine www.InternetRetailer.com, there was an article about How to Build Your Brand via Twitter with Promotional Messages Followers will Pay Attention to and take action on.

Twitter promotions you can do easily:

1. Via Sign-up forms ~ Post a link on Twitter inviting people to simply sign up for a prize drawing.

2. Create a Follower Collector contest and award a prize for the ____ follower (for instance Whole Foods had a one-millionth follower contest and a awarded a gift card and a million grains of qiuinoa.  Friends are encouraged to tell their friends to follow the target account.

3. Retweets are a fast, simple and easy way to spread your news virally to your followers followers. Everyone who retweets a promotional tweet is entered to win a prize.

4. Hashtags are another way to encourage Twitter users to promote your contest. Hashtags are intstant advertising because when the hashtag appears in someone’s twitter stream, anyone who reads it (their followers) can click on it and see all the communication that accompanies the topic.  Moonfruit used this strategy to promote a contest giving away a MacBook every day for 10 days to random users who added the hashtag “#moonfruit” to their tweets. Moonfruit reported a gain of 2,000 new customers in 24 hours.

   Some Tips to an effective contest:

Be open about the contest – transparency is key on Twitter and ANY social networking site.  If people feel duped, the long-term negative results can be significant.

Make it relevant. Does the contest relate to your product or service and more importantly to the end-user?

What are the goals for your contest?  Do you want to increase your database? Get more traffic to your website? Sell more product? Knowing the answers to these questions can help in creating a relevant and successful contest.

Have a daily update about how your promotion is going. The number of contestants, visitors, any daily winners, etc. This is a great way to draw additional attention to the contest and encourage more participation.

Also, be sure you know the laws and regulations in your area or the area in which you are promoting the contest regarding online contests and promotions.Have the proper disclaimers, privacy policies, etc in place so you can host a “contest” without breaking any rules.

You can read the complete article at: http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/verticalweb/200910_InternetRetailer/ (page 56)

I got the above Twitter graphics from the following sites:

 Twitter Follow me badge from Vincent Abry 

Twitter icon: via Problogger (Thanks Darran!) Be sure to check the site out as he has a list of 181 FREE Twitter buttons, badges, icons and graphics.

tori Hartman said,

January 26, 2010 @ 11:17 pm

Heidi -
I love your site. Wow, I found this on Twitter, and you have real great tips. I’ve bookmarked your site, and will refer back quite a bit.

Thank you!

Tori

Per Olsson said,

January 27, 2010 @ 1:04 am

Good tips!

Tweets that mention How to host a successful promotion, contest or other competition on twitter | Speaking with Spirit -- Topsy.com said,

January 27, 2010 @ 12:41 pm

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by J D Ebberly, Heidi RichardsMooney, Heidi RichardsMooney, BeverlyMahone , Women's eCommerce and others. Women's eCommerce said: How to Launch a Successful Twitter Promotion ~ http://bit.ly/4ZDhsG (via @HeidiRichards) [...]

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