7 Types of Twitter Contests to Boost Your Reach And Engagement

Looking for more reach and engagement on Twitter? Try running a contest!

Contests can benefit your brand in a number of ways. They can increase your number of followers, improve your reach and visibility, encourage your followers to engage more with your content, generate positive sentiment and more.

If you’ve considered running a Twitter contest, but aren’t quite sure where to start, we’ve got 7 ideas for different types of contests you can run.

1. Photo contests

Photo contests are a great way to get your current follower base more engaged with your brand. You can ask them to take a photo of themselves with your product, snap a funny pic or share an image of their daily lives.

With a photo contest, be sure you either retweet or thank each entry – and when you select a winner, give it lots of fanfare on Twitter!

2. Creative/funny answer contests

Ask your followers to submit their most creative or funny answer to a question or scenario you tweet. It’s a good idea to include a hashtag as part of this campaign, so you can collect all of the responses in one place.

Again, retweet the best entries to show appreciation, and to encourage other followers to enter.

3. Retweet to enter contests

One of the simplest types of Twitter contests is the retweet to enter. All your followers have to do is retweet your “seed” contest tweet, and they will be entered to win!

As a brand, you only need to look at who retweeted that single tweet, and randomly select a winner. What could be easier than that?

4. Follow to win contests

Another dead-simple Twitter contest is the follow to win. You can announce this contest across other social media platforms, letting your followers elsewhere know that if they follow you on Twitter they could win a prize.

5. First-to-answer contests

For an ultra-short-term contest, why not give your fastest followers a reward? Ask a question, and give the prize to the first person to tweet the correct answer. This works well in short spurts, and if you run this type of contest regularly, your followers will be more likely to keep tuning in to your tweets so they don’t miss out.

6. Tweet a hashtag contests

Creating a branded hashtag for a specific contest is a good way to improve your reach while rewarding your followers. All they have to do is include the hashtag you create in a tweet that is relevant to the contest, and they will be entered to win.

7. Caption contests

If you’ve got a creative bunch of followers, you can ask them to write a funny, interesting or smart caption for a photo you tweet. You’ll get to select the best one of the bunch and reward them with a prize. As with the other creative contests, be sure to tweet the winning entry.

As you’re creating your contests, don’t forget to follow Twitter’s guidelines to keep them above-board, and be sure to track the results. But most of all, have fun!