Running a sweepstakes on Twitter can be the fastest to market, and most cost effective, method of running a sweepstakes. However, things can quickly go wrong if you don’t follow these 3 simple best practices:
- Follow the brand.
The only way to privately contact your potential winners via Twitter is still via direct message (DM). And the only way to DM an entrant is if they follow your brand. In the rules, make it clear that in order to enter you must follow the brand. If it’s too late for that, you can post a public tweet asking a potential winner to contact you or follow the brand – but be careful not to call these people winners on your public tweets until they contact you (call them “potential winners”). This way you can disqualify those that don’t respond or meet criteria in private without it becoming a public affair.
- Require specific hashtags.
In order to track who enters your sweeps you will want to track the words you want people to use. The best way to do this is with hashtags before the word or phrase you want to track. You don’t have to own a phrase or word, but make it unique enough to be trackable. For example, #HappyCatPhotos is a more unique term than just #Cat. Ask people to use specific hashtags you define in your call to action and rules. If you don’t spell it out, people might get creative with spelling or put spaces in the phrase which could mean people tweet things like #Happy #Cat or #Happy Cat Photos which would negate entries or make tracking difficult.
- Include the rules link when you tweet about the sweeps.
It goes without saying that you need rules for a sweepstakes. But it may not be so clear how you post them for the public to access. Your best bet is to include a link to the rules page every time you post a tweet about the sweeps. This will help keep you in compliance with your disclosures.
If you need help developing a Twitter sweepstakes or collecting hashtag data, contact us.
To read more posts by Marden-Kane, please visit our main blog page or subscribe to our email list.