Web 2.0 Mar­ket­ing Tip #66: Boost Your Traf­fic with Twit­ter Contests

Twit­ter has now be­come a very pop­u­lar mar­ket­ing plat­form. You can use it not only to di­rectly pro­mote your prod­ucts but to cre­ate a buzz to get more traf­fic and fur­ther es­tab­lish your on­line presence.

One re­cent trend in this web 2.0 site is to cre­ate “re-tweet­­ing” con­tests. The idea be­hind these is both sim­ple and bril­liant. If you can do this prop­erly, you can rest as­sured that your Twit­ter ac­count will get a tidal wave of new followers.

Cre­at­ing a „re-tweet­­ing” con­test is very easy. Here are the steps you need to take:

  1. Start by com­ing up with a suf­fi­ciently de­sir­able con­test prize. Af­ter all, if you are not will­ing to give good prizes, you won’t be able to con­vince any­one to join. Some prizes you might want to of­fer are: $150, free prod­ucts, or a gift card.
  2. Once you have de­cided on the prizes, then you can al­ready an­nounce the con­test. You have to dis­cuss the de­tails of your con­test. You have to say when it will hap­pen and how the win­ner will be cho­sen. Ide­ally, you can give prizes for free via a raf­fle. There is a catch here, how­ever; in or­der to en­ter the raf­fle, a per­son must a) be a fol­lower and b) must re-tweet your con­test announcement.
  3. Hold the con­test on the sched­uled time and date. Tweet re­minders every day, for the last 4 days be­fore your con­test. Once the day and time ar­rive, start draw­ing raf­fles and dis­cussing prizes with the entrants.

The idea be­hind this, as I’ve said, is sim­ple: each en­trant in your con­test will re-tweet to tens, hun­dreds, or even thou­sands of fol­low­ers. The fol­low­ers of your fol­low­ers will see the re-tweet, be­come your fol­lower and then re-tweet to oth­ers. This is a vi­ral strat­egy that al­lows you to gain not only more fol­low­ers but a lot more po­ten­tial customers.