3 tips to successfully run a Twitter contest

Boost your social media engagement with Like a Bird! How? Simple: automated and fair contest management, 100% mobile user experience, customization according to the goals of your operations. Not to mention user support, available on chat as soon as you log in. Save precious time for your community manager and optimize the interaction with your Twitter follower community today!

Twitter limits the number of RTs displayed to 100 on all web or mobile interface and APIs. In consequence, if you receive more than 100 RTs for your Follow&RT and you do not use an adapted platform such as Like a Bird, you will only have 2 options:

Select only the last 100 contestants, thus disadvantaging the most engaged users that responded the first to your tweet.

• Manually check the list of retweeting users to select all the participants.
• In a word, you must be very brave to believe that you are fair without using an automated platform!

Find here how to manage a Twitter Follow and retweet contest with Like a Bird.

Knowing that Twitter is mainly used on mobile devices (80%), you need a mechanism that lasts the longest in Twitter's native environment. That being said, asking users to fill in a form on an external page before being able to participate will not work. This practice invented by Facebook contests influences the number of participants on Twitter.

Here's a real-world example: one of the Like a Bird clients confirmed having reached 1400 participants in 15 days after switching to Like a Bird's Twitter contest management tool compared to only 14 participants in 10 days of Instant wins that filled in a form on an external page.

If your user community is rather small and still not so engaged, you should better avoid complex Twitter contest mechanisms that require a lot of engagement from contestants. This way, your Follow&RT and Instant-gagnants will be equally privileged. For more engaged communities, you can also ask people to generate content, such as in a Picture contest, or an additional action following participation (become follower / retweet / tweet), even filling in a short mobile compatible form with their contact information to double their chance of winning!