To increase the amount of new followers and enhance the engagement of those who already follow your brand on Twitter, you should try some kind of contest (some people rate Twitter contests even more effective than paid investments!).
Here are 3 frequent types of contests:
- Creative answer: You can organize a contest by asking an interesting question referring to a topic bounded to your business: Your followers should answer in a creative way by using a hashtag (#keyword) and mentioning your Twitter account (@…). Due to the limitation of 140 caracters for each Tweet, it is easy to handle the answers given by the followers and to look for the most creative ones.
- Retweet sweepstakes: Make your followers retweet your tweet to join the contest. You may integrate a link to a landing page in order to give more detailed information about the rules of the contest, its duration and the prizes to win. Through a retweet contest, you may kill two birds with one stone: That way your message tweeted by your business account is rapidly diffused via your followers and the name of your business will get particular attention. If your business account on Twitter needs more followers, you can integrate a call to follow your page AND retweet in order to win at the same time.
- Photo contest: Another simple type of contest: Your followers have to tweet a photo that answers the question you asked by simply tweeting the contest-message. It is important that the participants mention your page in their answer – in order to make sure that it is guaranteed to be returned. At the end of the contest, the most creative winner can be chosen by the organizers.
Regardless of which contest you choose, don’t forget to prepare it accurately by defining clear boundaries (such as allowing the participants to retweet only once a day for example).
What about you? Have you ever tried a Twitter contest for your business? Or do you know of any positive examples worth mentioning?
source: http://www.jeffbullas.com/2012/05/14/4-awesome-types-of-successful-twitter-contests/









