If your Twitter account has been stagnant for a while and you’re not seeing any substantial growth, consider running Twitter giveaways. It's easier than you think and is an effective way to drive more engagement and build your follower base.

Here we’ll show you exactly how to do giveaways on Twitter, pick winners, and the guidelines you should follow.

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Why Run a Twitter Giveaway?

Giveaways on Twitter can be a part of an effective marketing strategy for Twitter. They can help you accomplish three main goals:

• Growing Your Following - If you want to grow your audience, run a contest with a “retweet” or “tag a friend” component.
• Building Brand Awareness - If you want to grow your personal brand, create a buzz and reach a large number of new users, Twitter giveaways and contests are a good option.
• Promoting a Product - If you are launching a new digital product or service, use a contest to build hype. Use excellent imagery for your giveaway bundle or product to make your tweet pop.

Twitter’s Guidelines on Giveaways and Contests

Twitter has a few strict Twitter contest rules. In particular, you can run contests with only certain components, such as using a hashtag, following, and retweeting.

When setting up your giveaway, follow these guidelines and discourage your followers from behaviors that are against the rules, such as spamming and using multiple accounts to enter the contest.

How to Set Up a Twitter Giveaway

As long as you follow Twitter contest terms and conditions, it is quite easy and straightforward to set it up. Here’s how to go about it.

Define Your Goals

Without clear goals, you’ll be wasting your money and time. Here are some of the goals you might want to achieve through your giveaway:

• Gaining more followers
• Improving engagement
• Enhancing your brand awareness
• Acquiring new leads

Set practical, achievable, and measurable goals so you can track the effectiveness of the contest against your goals later.

Decide on the Criteria for Entry

Think about how you want your participants to qualify for the giveaway gift. Here are some of the common criteria to choose from:

• Hashtags
• Mentions
• Comments
• Retweet
• Follow account
• Mentions
• Follow account
• Post a photo

Pick the criteria based on the overall goals for your Twitter giveaway.

Decide on a Prize

Pick a prize that participants will be excited about. It should be worth their effort to enter, so make it something good. Digital prizes work well on Twitter since they are easily accessible. Here are a few ideas to pick from:

• Credit for your online digital store
• One-on-one free digital consultation/meet-and-greets
• Free templates
• Free eBook

Develop Giveaway Guidelines

Develop clear guidelines and contest terms and conditions, so participants have all the information they need before they enter the Twitter giveaway.

It's best to list the terms and conditions for the contest on an external page and then link it to your contest post. The page should contain details like:

• Entry criteria
• Eligibility criteria like location and age
• Start date and end date
• Prize
• How will the winner be picked
• How will the winner be contacted

Make the terms as clear as possible to protect yourself from any legal problems later.

Set Up the Giveaway

Once you have all the details sorted out, the next step is to set up your Twitter giveaway and create a post. Link to your terms and conditions page in your tweet and keep the copy short, clear, and easy to understand.

Make it visually appealing with vivid imagery of your giveaway prize to stand out in the feed and encourage others to share your tweet.

Promote Your Giveaway

Your work is not yet over. Schedule regular reminders and promotional posts in advance to provide your contest with as much visibility as possible.

Meanwhile, engage with participants and answer any questions they may have.

Select a Winner

One of the most daunting tasks for those running a giveaway on Twitter for the first time is picking a winner.

Use a Twitter contest picker like Easypromos and Comment Picker to automatically choose a random winner for the contest. Once you have selected a winner, notify them immediately and post a tweet with the winner's name.

Review Your Giveaway Results

After your contest, it is important to track the numbers to see if you achieved the goals you set at the start of the campaign.

Analyzing your performance through an analytics tool can provide you valuable insight into how to plan future contests.

Top Tips to Help You Make the Most of Your Giveaway

Now that you know how to run a Twitter contest, here are our top tips to help you maximize engagement on your contest:

Keep Your Giveaway Posts Short

The character limit for tweets is 280 characters, but posts with 100 characters tend to get 17% higher engagement compared to longer tweets.

Write to the point and let the image in your giveaway post do all the talking. Use power words that pique the interest of your viewers and encourage them to participate. Here are a few examples:

• Enter Now
• Get ____ Free
• Get Your Free ____

Use Videos, Photos, or GIFs

According to Brandwatch, tweets with images are 34% more likely to be retweeted, get 89% more likes, and have 18% more click-throughs when compared with posts with no images.

Adding an image, video, or GIF to your giveaway post can help you add more information with fewer characters and increase engagement substantially.

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Keep the Instructions Clear

Make it easy for your followers to enter your contest by giving them precise, clear instructions. If there are multiple steps for entry, make them simple, so there are no misunderstandings. This is also crucial to avoid any errors and legal troubles later.

Partner with Influencers

Join hands with an influencer to reach a wider audience. Pick the kind of Twitter giveaway that will help your mutual goals. Set up the contest so users will need to follow both accounts to enter the contest.

Use a Strong CTA

Your CTA should be highly visible and actionable, so even if a follower skims through the page, the CTA will grab their attention.

Here are a few guidelines on how to craft a strong CTA:

• Use consistent CTA and post language to avoid confusion
• Do not use multiple CTAs. This can be distracting.
• Use clear and authoritative language.
• Create a sense of urgency with your CTA.

Remind your Audience Regularly about the Giveaway

Tweets have a very short life span. If you want to keep the engagement going, you’ll need to increase the lifespan of your giveaway. Post regular reminder tweets, so your followers know that the giveaway is still on. Even better, pin the giveaway post so anyone visiting your profile will see it.

Engage New Followers After the Giveaway

You’ll have plenty of new followers after your Twitter giveaway is over. Continue to engage with them, so they don’t unfollow you. If they leave, all your efforts will be in vain. Stay active on the platform, post regularly, and reply to comments you receive to keep the momentum strong.

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