Content Marketing Movie Website Traffic Social Networking Sites

How and When to Promote Contests, Giveaways, and Sweepstakes on Twitter to Maximize their Pageviews

Promoting a contest, giveaway, or sweepstakes sponsored on your film website can be made simpler with the use of Twitter. Twitter is a social networking platform that lets you talk to your audience in real time. Hopefully you have joined Twitter already. We spoke about that in this post: Social Networking: Join Twitter and Place a Twitter Icon on your Website. The key is to promote on Twitter effectively and to maximize the penetration of each tweet throughout Twitter.

Tweet Schedule

Tweet about your contest on the first day of your contest, during the mid-point of the contest, and on the last day of the contest. The first tweet brings the existence of the contest to your

Twitter-Bird

Twitter followers. The second tweet lets them know it is still ongoing and advertises it to those unaware of it. The third and final tweet is for the people that were on the fence of entering your contest and also to bring it to the attention of those that were unaware of its existence up to that point.

When to Tweet the Contest

When Twitter is most heavily trafficked during the day is a good time to tweet about your contest. Common sense told me that time was mid-day and some others feel the same way. From Gary McCaffrey

I have charted them below showing how many visitors came  [to my site] at what hour of the day.

twitter-traffic-garymccaffrey

As you can see, the spike is between 12 noon and 2 p.m. From WebsiteDesignNewcastle,

The busiest time on Twitter is GMT 1900-2100 (7pm to 9pm). It doesn’t take a genius to figure out this is lunchtime in the USA and in most Pacific time zones.

The quietest time on Twitter is GMT 0700-0900 (7am to 9am). That’s the midnight shift in the USA.

Hashtags

Get your tweet exactly in front of of the people that we will take action on them and click through to your contest, giveaway, and sweepstakes. Use Hashtags. I spoke about them in this post: How to Advertise your Movie Review aggressively on Twitter. The Hashtags that will make your tweet show up in the right Tweet searches are: Prize, Win, Free, Competition, Contest, Giveaway, DVD, Blu-ray, Movie, Film, and Sweepstakes. This modus operandi requires you to manually tweet your contests, most automated service will not add Hashtags, they will only tweet the title of the post and a redirect URL. If a service orb plugin does allow the use of Hastags, it will add those Hashtags to all your tweeted posts.

In the beginning

I usually begin my contest, giveaway, or sweepstakes tweet with WIN, in all caps. This signifies that there is something to be gained – a prize – by clicking through the link provided. It’s incentive advertising within your tweet.

In Conclusion

Use every social medium you can to promote your contest, giveaway and sweepstakes, especially Twitter. Billboard your contest instantly on Twitter during high traffic times and maximize the eyes on your contest tweets with the appropriate Hashtags.

About the author

Rollo Tomasi

Rollo Tomasi is a Connecticut-based film critic, TV show critic, news, and editorial writer. He will have a MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University in 2025. Rollo has written over 700 film, TV show, short film, Blu-ray, and 4K-Ultra reviews. His reviews are published in IMDb's External Reviews and in Google News. Previously you could find his work at Empire Movies, Blogcritics, and AltFilmGuide. Now you can find his work at FilmBook, ProMovieBlogger, and TrendingAwards.

Share via

You cannot copy content of this page

Send this to a friend