Roadtest #16: Twitter Competitions

Flicking through Cosmopolitan magazine recently, I found a wonderful article devoted to Twitter competitions. Apparently bird is indeed the word...


This article (page 233, Australian September 2010 issue) shows a smattering of previous offers available on tweet street, including:

• @ZUShoes:   Freebies of movie tickets, shoes and DVDs and sales forecasts.
• @CottonOn:   On Valentine's Day, Cotton On ran a Twitter comp where winners scored free T-shirts.
• @VirginBlue:   Last year, Virgin Blue advertised 1,000 fares on Twitter for a tiny 9 cents each!
• @PenguinBooksAus:   Earn free books from literary trivia questions.
• @RoadshowFilms:   Win DVDs and movie tickets talking about your fave films.

I'm particularly taken with the discount airfares!! So, how do you access these glorious goodies? The first step is to sign yourself up to Twitter. Go to www.twitter.com to get started. Once you're all set up, you'll need to start following businesses that would hold Twitter promotions.

My account (beckdoyle) is now following: Virgin Blue, Witchery, Bonds, Roadshow Films, Sportsgirl, Mimco, Lenard's, Boost Juice, and Dymocks. In addition to the brands mentioned in Cosmo, I found these by checking out Brands To Follow, which lists a whole host of famous Aussie companies.

Because these companies post competition tweets somewhat sporadically, you may need to trawl for current comp tweets using the Twitter search box. I did this by using keywords like "win" and "competition", but found narrowing it down to the type of prize (eg "win DVD" or "win tickets") produces the best results. You will definitely need to sort the wheat from the chaff, but can find some excellent comps offering small but desirable prizes. To enter, retweet the post, go to a web site or tweet a response to the business's/blog's/web site's Twitter page.

How to make the most from Twitter? Tweet, compete, repeat!