Did you ever enter a competition and not win? Of course you have. We all have.
When the predictable happens — and you don’t win — the mind tells you:
“The odds were against me winning. Maybe nobody won. I bet it was a stitch-up.”
And you resolve to never enter a competition again.
But what about Twitter competitions? You know, the ones that say: ‘First prize an iPad! RT to enter.’
I have definitely RT’d a few of those in the past — and then I stopped because I didn’t win.
For some reason there have been lots of these ‘RT to win’ tweets recently, and I thought I’d ask:
I was surprised by the number of people who responded to say they had won prizes. And by the range of booty. Here’s a shortlist:
- A taxi ride
- Gig tickets
- A photo-printer
- Restaurant dinner
- Books
- A necklace
So there you go. The prizes do exist and they do get won.
Of course running these competitions is a well-worn PR path. It probably does help brands and organisations grow their Twitter following. For my part, I’m going to RT the next 10 ‘RT to win’ tweets I see, and, unless I win something, give up again!
I think the value of the competition should be questioned in terms of 1)are the followers you gain going to be engaged in your next messages?
or
2)are they following to retweet, maybe win, and then ignore or un-follow you?”
The third response may be building a following and then giving a relevant prize that the winners may tweet positive reviews of that you can then retweet? But that is starting to sound tenuous?
Either way the strategy for the next few weeks of tweets should perhaps reflect the message that the competition carried.
Looking forward to your next instalment.
Hi Tim, and thanks for stopping by.
I guess the Holy Grail is to get participants — and particularly winners — to amplify good news about prizes, but I wonder how much of that actually happens.
If I win I’ll say “Great, I won.” But I won’t suddenly turn into an advocate for the brand. But then again, I’ve never won… 😉