Why did he do this?  Primarily to figure out whether entering contests on Twitter actually yielded prizes, and they did.  From 165,000 prize draws entered via his bot over the course of 9 months, he won around 1000 prizes.  A 1:165 ratio is not spectacular, but it isn’t awful either (for reasons we will go into shortly).  Of course, having entered 165,000 prizes, there was no particular guarantee that he’d win anything he actually wanted, and the vast majority of prizes he did win he didn’t claim as he either didn’t want them, they were logistically impossible, or would have prompted him paying taxes on winnings (applicable in the US).

A selection of Hunter’s winnings. Credit: www.hscott.net

Of course Twitter has limits on tweet frequency (users describe this as “Twitter Jail”), and on following/follower ratio (if you’re under around a hundred or so followers, you can’t follow more than 2000 people).  Hunter’s script was able to turn over new followers (and unfollow promotional accounts whose contests had ended) at a rate which wouldn’t hit limits, and the stream of Tweets with relevant “Retweet to win” content was of a frequency that he could retweet constantly without landing in “Jail”.

How is this relevant for people running Twitter promotions?  Hunter’s script is the first we had heard of for this purpose, but creating Twitter bots (automated scripts) is nothing new, and is extremely common.  Usually these bots are used for benign, often humorous purposes (example), but it wouldn’t be too difficult to mimic the functionality of a contest entering bot.  But it isn’t bots you should be worried about.  What is described above is achievable (perhaps on a slightly smaller scale) by humans, who, for all intents and purposes are behaving in an automated or robotic way, and it’s extremely common.

A significant portion of entrants to the classic “RT and Follow” competitions are entering the contest among hundreds of others in a short time period.  The ease with which an entry is submitted (clicking a retweet icon, and/or a follow icon) means perhaps less than 3 seconds elapses before the entry is complete.  Given access to a large stream of contests (simply searching for hashtags like #win, #competition, or #contest is sufficient), and these promotions can be batch-entered – assuming pretty fast fingers and an indiscriminate attitude to what is on offer, someone could enter 20 or more in a minute.  Now, physically few will be capable of that, but by the above logic, it is certainly conceivable that a keen entrant could enter over 100 in a day with little difficulty.  Could they recall what they’d entered, for what, and by whom?  Unlikely.

This is an extreme example.  Of course many brands and personalities run a Twitter competition and fans and engaged consumers may react specifically because they are engaged with or interested in the promoter (a valuable entrant), but if they are trawling the #win hashtag, it’s an unlikely confluence of wanting to win a prize and truly being interested in the person or entity offering it.

When we are critical of the somewhat superficial nature of Twitter promotions, at conference presentations, or on the blog, often people bring up our (pretty popular) tool to draw a random retweet, hashtag or follower called Tweetdraw.  Aren’t we telling people not to use it?  In a sense, perhaps, but contests on Twitter and Facebook aren’t going anywhere.  The ease with which they can be deployed and repeated, and the emphasis on the vanity metrics they can produce, often with little effort, means they are only getting more popular.

So what are we recommending in lieu of a standard “RT and follow”?  Well, there’s no reason you can’t use Twitter as an entry mechanism, just do it off Twitter!  An incentive (your prize) can and should win you eyeballs.  Make sure those eyes are actually viewing what you are promoting, and that would start on a landing page, and could graduate to a video, a creative competition with user-generated content, or even an instant win game.  By doing so you are able to control the level of engagement and retention of entrants through your entry mechanic and barrier to entry.  Simply put: users or customers you acquire will have a discriminate value.  We have a deck on this subject you might find useful here.

Ever since tools like Roboform, entry automation is nothing new.  Automated entry services have also been around for many years.  But could bots on Twitter be the thing that tips promoters into running more inventive contests?  Maybe.  But it’ll be a while yet.

You can read Scott’s full article on his bot experiment here.

The post Twitter Bots to Enter Contests Automatically. What’s the Value in Running a Twitter Contest Again? first appeared on Competition PR, Marketing, Design, Legal, Compliance, Prize fulfilment - The Competition Agency.

Iain Haywood from The Competition Agency was invited to speak at Brighton SEO in April 2015:

Brighton SEO is the largest online marketing conference in Europe, and when organiser Kelvin Newman asked if I’d like to speak on the main stage alongside the twin powerhouses of Emily McGillivray from Moz and Vicke Cheung from Distilled, it was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.

For my presentation, I chose to focus on the reliance on incentivisation per se in promotional marketing, where the act of giving something away alone is relied upon, to the detriment of intent, recapture value, links, PR coverage, sharing and goodwill.  “Fun” as a priority is rarely considered, given the effort (and sometimes expense) it can require.  However, taking the time to build something inherently fun as infrastructure which pulls rather than a transient campaign which requires push, means not only are the entrants and users caring and sharing a lot more, but you as promoter can worry a lot less about what and how much you need to give away.

I gave examples all the way from the lowly RT and Follow/Like and Share sweepstakes so commonly found, to leading multiplayer game titles like League of Legends and World of Warcraft, via instant win competitions, contest SaaS (like Rafflecopter and Gleam) and landing pages in between.  Whilst there are obvious leaps in budgets and technical integrations, the DNA of f2p and MMO games is 90% of what makes a giveaway work, namely:

• Instant win (repeated action with the expectation of a different result in games)
• Recurring entry requirements (“grinding”, or leveling up, training, missions, farming, mining in games)
• Incentivised sharing or friend referral (team play, friend revive/heal, item sharing in games)

The slides for this presentation can be found below:

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Iain Haywood from The Competition Agency was invited to speak at Searchlove London in November 2014:

I was delighted to be asked by Will Critchlow, CEO of Distilled, to speak about promotional marketing at their Searchlove conference.  It’s fair to say that it’s a very heavy weight conference in terms of speakers, attendees, and presentation material.  SEO is naturally the focus, but the prevalence of promotions in the online marketing “mix” these days (including for SEO purposes) meant there was solid interest in a topic like this.  It was a pleasure to share the stage with the likes of Wil Reynolds and Rand Fishkin.

Having a full 45 minute session in a single track conference (i.e. one stage) was a great opportunity to open all valves and attempt (in only 45 minutes of course) to run through as much of an a-z on:

• Planning
• Build
• Compliance
• Marketing and PR
• Prizes

The title of the presentation, “Promotional Marketing: The Good, Bad and Ugly” was designed to give actionable direction in maximising the upside potential of a campaign, flagging potential sources of conflict, non-compliance, and PR blowback, and demonstrating what can happen if downside risks are not addressed.

The post The Competition Agency Presenting at Searchlove London 2014 first appeared on Competition PR, Marketing, Design, Legal, Compliance, Prize fulfilment - The Competition Agency.

Terms and Conditions not only allow your entrants to scrutinise exactly the rules and details related to your promotion, but also allows you to back up the enforcement of any rules against your entrants in the event of an infraction or dispute.  Herein are our best practice tips, and also a selection (note: not exhaustive by any means) of what you should be including.  First, though, some Dos and Don’ts:

Do:

– Include terms and conditions, always.  It does not matter if you’re running a contest on social media, you must still link to your terms and have them easily accessible.

– Be explicit.  Don’t be shy to explicitly state what you do and don’t want your entrants to do.  It may sound like overstatement, but the barring cheating, fraudulent or automated entry should be explicitly prohibited, as users may claim that such actions are accepted in the absence of statement to the contrary.

– Be clear.  Legalese won’t help clarify what the rules are.  Don’t give infringing entrants a margin of appreciation.

Don’t:

– Change your terms and conditions after you have launched your promotion.  This is misleading, and can cause conflict down the line, as well as potential compliance issues.  Make sure, thus, that you have adequately planned every aspect of the campaign prior to launch;

– Lie.  Don’t make in your terms and conditions (nor anywhere else) misleading statements, nor statements that you can not back up if challenged (e.g. if you make a claim that winners will be contacted within a certain time period, make sure you can demonstrably show this).

– Be unreasonable.  You have every right to enforce your terms and conditions, but do not use them as a method of capriciously denying rightful winners their prizes.  Don’t include rules that are wholly unreasonable or unrealistic to follow.

What to include:

What you include in your terms and conditions will broadly depend on what type of promotion you are running, and where you are running it.  Territorial requirements (i.e. the country or state you are running it in, and whether it is restricted to one territory or is cross border) will determine exactly what you need to include to comply with local marketing or data protection requirements.  But here, without being exhaustive, are some of the things you should be sure to include in your Ts&Cs.

• Start and end dates, including the local time on those dates of opening and close
• Dates of winner(s) announcement and dates of prize fulfilment or any structured liaison
• Geographical (e.g. “valid in UK and Ireland”), age (e.g. “18 years or older), and conflict (e.g. “excluding employees and agents of”) restrictions
• The exact nature and number of the prizes
• Whether replacements or equivalents (e.g. cash value) will be offered and their nature
• Details of all methods of entry, including free entry methods
• Details of winner selection, rounds, if a random draw, if judged (and if so; how)
• Restrictions on entry based on the nature of the prize (e.g. alcohol or driving)
• Prohibition of cheating, duplicate/fraudulent/3rd party entry
• The use of winning entries and winners for PR purposes if applicable
• The retention of copyright over entries if applicable
• Legal jurisdiction

Don’t leave your rules and regulations until the last minute.  With strong, dependable terms and conditions, you can be confident in launching your promotion, and weathering any issues; however unlikely.

The post Contest/Competition Terms and Conditions Best Practice first appeared on Competition PR, Marketing, Design, Legal, Compliance, Prize fulfilment - The Competition Agency.

Running music or remix contests/competitions

Run a Mixcloud contest

Mixcloud is a DJ mix/radio focussed social network where users can consume and uploaded their own content.  Mixcloud are actively supportive of creative contests, and have worked with many big DJ equipment/pro audio/music label/music event brands like Native Instruments, Ibiza Rocks, and the Ministry of Sound.  They even go so far as to collate competitions on a specific page so users can find them more easily and are very generous with social media sharing.  Individual competition pages are available, and common entry mechanics are uploading and tagging.

Run a Soundcloud contest

Soundcloud is another audio consumption/upload community, which is larger, and more broad than Mixcloud.  There is access to a larger more generalised group, with many music producers hosting their work on the network, as well as artists and podcasters.  Soundcloud don’t have a specific page, but do regularly share new contests on Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr.  It is common for artists and their labels to run remix competitions of newly released tracks, and entrants can get exposed to the likes of Beyonce and Moby, who have run competitions in the past.  Soundcloud actually have their own Soundcloud contest app which can make running a competition easier.

Some tips:

• Abide by the terms of service and any other policies of individual network you’re hosting your content on;
• Contact the relevant network to let them know about your contest – they may help you promote it;
• Reach out to sites (and groups within networks) that help share and promote remix competitions – e.g. remixcomps.com;
• With any kind of remix/collaboration contest (be it music/video/image), make sure you have the rights to use and reproduce the content you are offering to others;
• And with any kind of creative competition, make sure you are aware of entrants cheating and passing others’ work off as their own.  In some instances reverse search services will be able to help;
• Make sure your terms and conditions are detailed, and you inform entrants on what the winners material may be used for and who retains copyright over it;
• With a creative contest, make sure you judge your winner(s)!  Voting competitions are a bad idea, and can cause problems with fraudulent contest votes;

The post How and Where to run a Remix Contest or Competition first appeared on Competition PR, Marketing, Design, Legal, Compliance, Prize fulfilment - The Competition Agency.

What does “Contra Deal” mean?

A contra deal is an arrangement where two or more parties exchange goods or services with no money changing hands.

In a marketing context

These sorts of deals may take the form of joint ventures, where both parties volunteer goods or services on broadly equal terms and equal reward, or one party may “host” a campaign and solicit an arrangement with one or more parties for complimentary goods or services where the partners’ pay-off is more incidental.

How this relates to prizes

Promoters can procure prizes for their contest by offering PR exposure, opt-ins, or other marketing benefits in exchange for a prize(s) that the promoter can give away.  On the reverse side, brands looking to promote certain products, can offer them to promoters running competitions in expectation of the above benefits.

If both parties are actively “pushing” the campaign, the added benefit of a multiplier effect can be observed.

Things to consider:

• There are no hard and fast rules, everything with a contra deal is negotiable;
• Do set out all parties’ obligations and responsibilities explicitly and don’t leave anything to chance.  Disappointment that one or other of the parties is not “pulling their weight” is otherwise common;
• Find complimentary partners to do this with.  It might feel like a partner shares the same market vertical and target audience, make sure they aren’t too close to you or you’ll be partnering with a competitor;
• And chose partners that will not only improve results/make savings, but also improve your brand’s credibility or goodwill

Be careful not to pass off a campaign that looks like a contra deal when it is not

If you’re running a promotion and are suggesting that it is in “partnership with”, “association with”, or “sponsored by” another brand, and it is not, this can cause problems.  Brands will have guidelines on how you can use their likeness, terms, or products.  Some brands and types of product (tickets are an example) will have restrictions on their use for the purposes of giving away as a prize in competitions.  This is often for reasons of “brand integrity” or pre-existing commitments that they have with other partnerships (which may be exclusive).  Don’t fake a relationship you don’t have!

The post What is a Contra Deal? How does it Apply to Prize Promotions? first appeared on Competition PR, Marketing, Design, Legal, Compliance, Prize fulfilment - The Competition Agency.

Automated Entry Services

Automated entry services come in two basic flavours:

Scripting/buying/exchange (primarily for votes)

In voting competitions, for most systems (be they proprietary, or via a social network like Facebook), it’s not hard to manipulate or exploit them.  Entrants can do this via:

• Scripting or technical exploitation
• Buying votes via Mechanical Turk systems, micro job sites like Fiverr.com
• Exchanging votes via horse trading/vote exchange groups on Facebook, forums, and on sites like getonlinevotes.com

To mitigate against Scripting/Fraud/Buying:

Cheating (fraudulent entry)

Many competitions are so simple that cheating isn’t necessary.  Do expect people to share the answer, in the grand scheme of things, it’s really not the end of the world.  People do however regularly cheat in creative competitions – particularly photo or narrative competitions.

To mitigate against cheating:

The post Automated Entry Services, Fraud, Scripting, Buying, and Cheating – ways in which your Competition or Giveaway can be Exploited first appeared on Competition PR, Marketing, Design, Legal, Compliance, Prize fulfilment - The Competition Agency.

Use Hashtags as your entry method

• Unlike Twitter Hashtags, Instagram Hashtags do not expire and thus are a better way of recording entries than using their Twitter equivalent
• Whilst Instagram posts can accept a maximum of 30 tags, use a single Hashtag as your entry identifier otherwise you risk entries being incorrectly tagged
• Don’t specify symbol characters (like & or !) as these break hashtags (numbers are fine)
• Consider the impact that private posts will have on Hashtag visibility (they won’t show up on Hashtag pages)

Make it a creative competition/contest

• As a reminder, here’s the difference between a competition and a giveaway (or a contest and a sweepstake).  Instagram is an inherently creative platform, much more so than Twitter.  Take advantage of Instagram users’ inherent creativity and make the competition a skill-based  creative competition
• In certain territories (the UK for example) you will need to show that there is an impartial judge.  Other territories may require an official with winner selection (Italy for example)
• Consider the impact of cheating!  Users can appropriate other users Instagram images (or regular images and feed them through their Instagram account).  It is important to not only actively prohibit misappropriated images in your terms and conditions, but also check using a reverse image search service (Tineye is a good example of a free service that can help) to identify if the image has been used before

Include terms and conditions

• Your contest will need terms and conditions – link the landing page hosting your T&Cs in your tweet using a short URL (bit.ly has good tracking) to minimise space
• Include in your T&Cs your start and end dates, demographic and geographic entry requirements, full details of prizes to be won, dates of draw/contact/prize delivery, and all prohibited actions – like entries from multiple accounts, entries using copyrighted images or unoriginal images taken by someone else
• Users are more willing to participate and share a competition they believe has rules and is fairly administered
• In the event of a dispute, the promoter will need to be able to demonstrate that rules and regulations were established and followed
• Your jurisdiction is likely to have rules/laws requiring adequate terms and conditions for any competition (in the UK it’s the CAP Code, section 8)

What will you use the winning image for?

• Consider your brand’s use of the winning Instagram image.  Will you regram it on your profile?  Use it in display media or social media elsewhere?
• Entrants can be encouraged that their work can become an “official” representation of your brand, but consider how the winner has been rewarded (they will want to feel that sufficient value is given to their work) and who retains copyright over it.  Instagram infamously suffered backlash when announcing that all images on the platform were to be made available for advertising purposes
• Make sure you clearly state not only in your competition description but also in your T&Cs what the winning image will be used for

Follow these best practice tips and your Instagram contest will be off to a solid start!

The post How to run an Instagram Competition or Giveaway (The Definitive Guide) first appeared on Competition PR, Marketing, Design, Legal, Compliance, Prize fulfilment - The Competition Agency.

We’ve talked before about how we’d like to see fewer RT and Follow prizedraws, but, that notwithstanding, here is our definitive guide to running a Twitter contest.

Include an image

• Tweets with images can generate 35% more Retweets (source) than tweets without.  Other studies put this figure much higher; some as high as 100%
• An image gives you the space you don’t have in 140 characters to outline further details of the competition, and most importantly illustrate the prize entrants can win
• Your image dimensions should fit Twitter’s in stream image preview (which means users don’t have to click away to see all of it).  The most recent (2014) Twitter in stream image dimensions are from 440 x220px up to a maximum of 1024×512, with an aspect ratio of 2:1

Start it at peak time

• What is peak time for Twitter?  Well, for the most part, peak hours are after around 6 or 7pm onwards.  There are notable engagement spikes too at lunchtime and breakfast/commuting time.  Much will depend on your target demographic (their age, working day, lifestyle etc) so bear this in mind
• On weekends, brands typically do not engage on Twitter on the weekends, one study finding that only 19% do (source).  Contrast this with a study showing that engagement with tweets on the weekend can be 17% higher (source)

Consider your entry method carefully (and explain it)

• The main entry “vectors” for a Twitter giveaway are Follow, Mention (@), Retweet, Hashtag, and Favourite
• Remember Twitter’s disclaimer that “Keep in mind that not all Tweets are indexed” in search if your entry mechanic relates to composure of a tweet
• Hashtags are not permanently stored in search, and typically Hashtags expire after two weeks.  Hashtags composed of numbers alone (e.g. #2015) will not be hyperlinked, and thus are not searchable
• Consider how protected accounts may affect entry

Include terms and conditions

•  140 characters is not sufficient to describe your promotion and include terms and conditions.  An end date is not enough
• Users are more willing to participate and share a competition they believe has rules and is fairly administered
• In the event of a dispute, the promoter will need to be able to demonstrate that rules and regulations were established and followed
• Link the landing page hosting your T&Cs in your tweet using a short URL (bit.ly has good tracking) or use Twitter’s default t.co auto-shortener
• Include in your T&Cs your start and end dates, full details of prizes to be won, dates of draw/contact/prize delivery, demographic and geographic entry requirements, and all prohibited actions (multiple account entry for example)
• Your jurisdiction is likely to have rules/laws requiring adequate terms and conditions for any contest or sweepstake (in the UK it’s the CAP Code, section 8)

Draw your winner fairly

• Many prize promotions on Twitter are not drawn fairly.  Sometimes they may blindly point at an @ mention, or deliberately select a popular Twitter user
• Draw your giveaway fairly, and tell your users how.  They’ll be more inclined to enter and share.  ASA (UK) complaints relating to unfairly drawn Twitter promotions have in the past been upheld
• If your mechanic is a giveaway/sweepstake (i.e. a random prizedraw, not judged) services like Tweetdraw are useful examples of how to draw your winner more fairly

Follow this best practice guide and your contest should be a success!

The post How to Run a Twitter Competition or Giveaway (The Definitive Guide) first appeared on Competition PR, Marketing, Design, Legal, Compliance, Prize fulfilment - The Competition Agency.

Sure, it’s easy to do, quick, and readily repeatable, but here are some serious drawbacks to running an “RT and follow” or “like and share” promo:

• These mechanics are rarely demonstrated to be drawn fairly;
• Adequate terms and conditions are rarely attached;
• Because of the above, these mechanics are less trusted, and can draw complaints (ASA adjudications in the UK for example sometimes cover unfairly drawn social media giveaways), and this can lead to PR blow-back;
• You’re targeting one objective (boosting fans or followers) on a single social network;
• Entries are entirely targeted and unfiltered, so the value of the entries for the purposes of re-marketing is low;
• And these mechanics tend to be repeated, with diminishing returns each time.

Shouldn’t competitions and giveaways be fun?

In creating a custom contest, sweepstake or game for your promotional campaign, you can actually make things fun.  Because promotional campaigns are often considered as a “path of least resistance”, because of the nature of incentivisation (and the ease with which a superficial campaign can be set up on social media), the idea that “fun” has any intrinsic value is often rarely acknowledged.

But if we look at fun as a measure of engagement, then it definitely has value.  Users will be more likely to actually appreciate the brand or product in front of them, and communicate that when telling their friends (which they’re much more likely to do).  They’ll also return to play even if the odds of winning are slim.  Consider the example of free casino games on sites or mobile apps, where the user does not stake or win any real money.  Surely if the cash payoff of gambling was removed, then these games would see no users.  On the contrary, the fun factor goes so far as to induce players to pay via in app purchase for upgrades.

We’ve talked before about how important technical entry is – by building a demonstrably recorded entry that a user can see and manipulate, they are far more willing to enter multiple times, share, and invite, because they trust that their efforts are being recorded properly and can be drawn fairly.  So how does one make a promotion fun?

Build it!

Where the Twitter or Facebook number-boosting giveaways are instant, they are not infrastructural.  Building your own promotional mechanic on your own website allows you to control completely and consistently your primary and secondary entries (example here), be creative, and retain the infrastructure of your promotion after it has finished.  You can adapt it, theme it, or simply repeat it depending on its popularity.  Some brands have custom instant win games that are permanently open as lead generation mechanisms.  Here are some considerations:

• Consider the devices users will enter your competitions on.  Building your app/game in flash will disadvantage iOS mobile or tablet users who will not be able to load it;
• Consider device responsiveness.  You will want a consistent experience on desktop, mobile, and tablet.  Technologies like html 5 and Javascript may be most useful;
• Do you want a contest/competition (i.e. a skill-based entry) or a giveaway/sweepstake (prizedraw)?  Instant-win or prizedraws typically work best with custom built promo apps/games as the functionality allows the entrant to know in real time whether he or she has won, and what he or she can do to enter again if not;
• Skill-based competitions are possible also, but will require a level of interactivity – for example, entrants uploading media like an Instagram picture, and manipulating it, or integrating it using your app or game;
• And creatively built promotional mechanics do not have to be limited to your website, if you are targeting specific platforms, host them natively – wanting to just target Facebook?  Run your promo as a Facebook app.  A particular mobile user?  Have it as a downloadable app.

The post Please, no more “RT and Follow” or “Like and Share” Promotions first appeared on Competition PR, Marketing, Design, Legal, Compliance, Prize fulfilment - The Competition Agency.