How To Create A Successful Twitter Contest

Twitter contests are a great way to find targeted followers who are interested in your content, products, and service.
Twitter contests are easy to set up and run, but you should carefully plan them, to make sure you attract the right people to your contest.
What Is a Twitter contest?
A Twitter contest is essentially a marketing campaign, that you use to get people to follow you and Tweet a predefined message.
When they Tweet your message, they are automatically entered into a drawing to win a prize. The prizes are usually awarded to people who follow you and/or people who Tweeted your predefined message.
Plan Properly
The results of Twitter contests are usually excellent if you plan them properly. The people who follow you during the contest usually stay engaged with you longer than other followers and they tend to take more action by Tweeting, ReTweeting and Replying to your Tweets.
They seem to get a sense that we are in this together and they go out of their way to support you and your company. They also tend to become frequent visitors of your website and other social media communities like your Facebook and LinkedIn pages.
Increase In Followers
The best thing about Twitter contests, is that you can expect to see a 20 to 25 percent increase in your followers and they will be very targeted followers. People will not participate in a Twitter contest if they aren't interested in your product or service.
Obviously the goal of most Twitter contests is to increase the number of targeted followers. Targeted followers are an extension of your marketing department and they help spread the word about your products and services for free. When a third party spreads positive comments about your products or services, it gives your company credibility and helps sell your products.
Collecting Information
You also want to collect contestants' contact information during your Twitter campaign, so you can nurture your new leads and eventually turn them into customers.
You collect their contact information, by enticing them to fill out a web form on your website or blog.
Targeted Followers
You want to attract targeted followers when you run a Twitter campaign. It won't help you if you attract thousands of new followers who are only interested in the prize you are giving away.
There are several ways to attract targeted followers during your Twitter campaign.

• Have a clear goal for your contest. What are you trying to achieve with your Twitter contest? Are you trying to generate new leads? Are you generating traffic for a new website or blog? Are you announcing a new product and you want to generate a buzz?

• You need to have a clear goal and outcome for your Twitter contest or you will be disappointed with your results. The clearer your goal is, the better your results will be.

• Choose prizes carefully. This is where people make some of their biggest mistakes when they conduct a Twitter contest. Your prize should match the goal for your contest. If you are trying to generate more targeted followers, offering a large cash prize isn't the right prize. Offering a $1,000 prize will attract a lot of new followers, but they may not be targeted. In fact many of your new followers will be participating in the contest just to win the $1,000, not to support your company.

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