We talk a lot about competitions on Facebook but Twitter can be a great tool for a competition. The promotional guidelines are looser and it’s easier to reach a mass audience. This weeks cool tool helps you manage your Twitter competition, it allows you to see entries, prompts entrants to share it via Twitter and can choose a winner for you. (I’m waiting for my Twitter competition to close to see how this works). It took me around 10 minutes to set up a basic competition but you may need a little longer to add your own privacy policy and terms and conditions.
To get started visit the Binkd website and sign up for a free account. Free accounts allow you to set up a free Twitter competition so after signing up scroll down the options until you find Twitter contest.
Next you will need to name your contest, set the dates and times for start and finish of it. You need to visit each tab on the interface to complete information.
– ‘Twitter’ connects the application to your Twitter account, and allows you to compose the tweet you want entrants to send.
– ‘Prizes’ allows you to describe your prize, categorise it and upload a photograph or image of it.
– ‘Terms’ allows you to add the T&C’s of your contest, e.g. no cash alternative, one entry per person and your Privacy Policy e.g. we won’t share your email address etc.
– ‘Design’ allows you to add a header image if you wish to brand your page more strongly.
Now you’re ready to launch your contest. I’ve created a test competition here that just runs for one day. You can see the page below.
Once someone enters they are prompted to Tweet an automated tweet to tell their followers about the competition.
I’ve played with lots of Twitter competition apps in the past and even tried to manage them manually, this one beats all of them hands down for simplicity. I’m dying to set up a real Twitter contest now so keep an eye on my Twitter account over the next few weeks for details.
If you set up a Twitter competition using this app I’d love to see it so do leave your links below in the comments.