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Featured Question

Promotions on Twitter
Posted by James from Chicago, IL, US on March 30, 2009

Can you run a legal promotion, like a sweepstakes, on Twitter?

Damn Skippy you can! The registrations and opt-ins that are collected via Twitter are just as valid as any other you may collect through more traditional means: web form, postcard, text message, etc. As long as the promotions administrator has a valid way to contact that person to validate the user for compliance and fulfill the prize, you are good.

There are many ways that you can execute a promotion on Twitter. Way beyond a sweepstakes, you can run a contest or even an instant win game utilizing the follow, reply, DM, and messaging channels in Twitter.

A great starter sweepstakes is to offer an entry to anyone who chooses to follow you on Twitter. In this case, every new @USERNAME is a registration. To contact the person and let them know he’s a winner, follow him back and DM him.

However, as a marketer, you may need to adjust your opinion on what is considered a registration, what registration data is enough. Your method of contacting winners as described in the official rules will also be a bit different than a traditional sweepstakes.

From there, get creative… You’ll have immediate access to a great number of people engaged with you and capable of talking back right then and there. What can you do? What type of promotion can get them excited and retweeting [aka telling it] to others? Just make sure to work with a professional in the social media and promotions sphere, and your legal counsel first.

Difference between Twitter and other web sites
Posted by Lenny from Seattle, WA, US on March 31, 2009

How is running a promotion on Twitter different from on the regular web?

Remember back in 1997, when we just starting to do promotions and collect lists via email? The debate about whether or not just email address would be enough? Well that debate is back again, only now we’ll be debating the questions: Is a Twitter follow enough?

I know that it’s hard to justify the existence of a new communications means, especially in today’s super-tight economy, but the real question that is being asked to your brand, or the brands that you represent, is: Is it more important to have a list of registration data, or an immediately actionable communications channel?

In the late 90’s, we used promotions as a tactic to collect email addresses, and gained a communications channel that was light years faster that direct mail and no where near as invasive as telephone. Now, we are in the position to use promotions to build fan bases and followers lists that provide instantaneous and immediately communicable channels with customers, and potential customers, unlike anything we’ve ever had before. And in this case, the customer is allowed to control the permissions [keeping the FTC out of our hair? Maybe?]

Not to say that it is “just that easy”. There are no forms anymore, and the consumer is far more sophisticated. The medium itself has evolved, and as it becomes simultaneously more sophisticated and streamlined, our interactions as marketers need to become [yep, I will say it] just as transparent and authentic in how and what we communicate.

But it’s still fast, and fun, and easy for the user, even if it an iceberg for us –an iceberg of hungry puppies that need to eat and talk and ask questions and provide interesting relevant and entertaining content in return without seeming plastic or intrusive.

That is the other caveat of running a promotion in concert with your social media campaigns. Your promotion has to be in concert with your social media campaign. You can’t just throw up a Twitter Page for the purpose of the promotion and throw it down when it’s over. OK, you can, do that, but you’ll be spending lots of time in the principal’s office explaining terms and phrases to upper management that would normally land you in an HR sensitivity seminar. To sustain the benefits of social media, and the lift to be gained by adding promotions to the mix, you need to feed your social media feeds a regular diet of information and personality so that people can connect, and feel they have a reason for interact with your beyond the mere currency of data.

So, to execute a promotion effectively and successfully on Twitter, or any social media platform, it needs to be a part of a larger social media marketing strategy.