Having a contest? Want to spread the word easily to a lot of people that are already networked with like-minded individuals? Twitter is a great format for spreading the words about contests and driving visitors to your site to enter. Although Twitter is a great tool when used in a respectful way, occasionally it’s used in ways that can actually drive folks away or sour them to your brand. As an example, a while back I talked about my annoyance with contests that urge folks to retweet to win.
I was pleased this week to see that photographer Scott Bourne has laid out his contest rules, and they include very reasonable entry instructions for Twitter. He encourages folks to tweet about the contest one time, and makes it clear that participants should not retweet multiple times (there’s no benefit to retweeting). I’ve given Scott some grief in the past over how he’s handled contests on Twitter, but I want to point to his current Twitter contests as a great example of how to do it right. It’s a great model that will allow your followers to spread the word about your contest but won’t be seen as an over-the-top or spamlike promotion.
Photo by alykat, used under Creative Commons licensing
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