In previous posts, I’ve covered how Twitter hashtags help you reach more audiences and connect with them. But there’s another great method I haven’t yet mentioned: Twitter hashtag contests!

What is a hashtag contest?

A contest on Twitter is a lot like the contests you find anywhere else. Someone (a brand, an organization, or you) puts up a prize, sets up a condition for winning, and other people try to win. The biggest difference is that, on Twitter, you need set up a hashtag to announce the contest and keep track of the entries.

How does that work?

Well the first thing you do is decide on your hashtag. Let’s say you’re XYZ beauty salon, and you want followers to submit pictures of funny faces. Our hashtag will therefore be “#XYZFunnyFace”.

Note: Remember to check whether or not this hashtag is already being used! If it is, try to find something else.

Then send out your tweet announcing the contest, and showing the hashtag that people need to use to participate. Don’t forget to promote your hashtag contest in other social media platforms, too! Get the word out any way you can!

If people want to participate, they will then tweet pictures of their funny faces while including the hashtag #XYZFunnyFace. You can then keep track of all contest tweets using this hashtag and judge the winner!

What kind of hashtag contests can I run?

Anything you want! Creativity is one of the keys to an engaging hashtag contest. Either come up with your own creative idea, or ask followers to be as creative as possible with their own entries! You can also create very simple hashtag contests that don’t require much effort on the part of the user.

Here are some basic ideas to get you started:

• Raffle.Any tweet that uses your hashtag is immediately entered into a raffle, and winners are picked randomly. Just remember to limit participants to one tweet per person!
• Photo contest. Users submit photographs of themselves doing funny things, or use products in creative and funny ways.
• Q&A. Pose a question to the Twitterverse, and the best answer wins!

Hashtag contests are really easy to set up and run. You just have to come up with a creative idea that will grab your followers’ interests, and maybe offer a prize that will appeal to a large number of people. But remember to keep it relevant to your business! Just offering cash or something may get people tweeting, but it won’t do anything to build your brand!

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