10 tips to win more prizes on Twitter
I win more prizes on Twitter than by any other method – averaging a prize a week, in fact. But it’s not as easy as you think – some retweet giveaways get thousands of entries! So how can you increase your chances of winning a Twitter competition? Here are my top tips…
1. Don’t just retweet, retweet, retweet…
Retweet comps are easy to enter, which makes them incredibly hard to win. They also turn your profile page into a spammy list of adverts, and could end up with you getting filtered from Twitter search results. Instead, spend more time entering comps where the promoter asks for a reply, photograph or a comment. Send original tweets, reply to people you follow and most of all, enjoy tweeting. If you do enter retweet giveaways, enter as late as you can to ensure your entry is seen!
2. Reply to promoters
Interact with promoters by replying to their tweets – even if it’s not a requirement of entry. Make your tweets memorable. Add photos, GIFs, be funny, say something about their amazing products – try tagging a Twitter friend too. ‘Great giveaway!’ will make them yawn. It’s hard to track all entries and choose a random winner for a retweet giveaway and some promoters will choose from replies instead. Note that if you choose to Quote Tweet, it won’t count as a retweet and won’t pop up on the promoter’s Mentions tab unless you @ tag them – find out why in Are you entering Retweet Competitions correctly?
3. Use a short username
Short, simple usernames are memorable, less likely to be misspelt by a promoter, and quick to type – and you’ll type it more than you realise, especially if you do Rafflecopter giveaways. Avoid numbers and underscores. Try not to let your username give away your age or your comping hobby – some promoters will be looking for winners of a certain age (usually those lucky twenty-somethings!) or dislike compers. Got a crap username? It’s easy to change it – the difficulty is finding one that’s not taken yet! To change it, simply log in, go to your Account Settings and type a new one in. Changing your username will not affect your followers, messages, and replies – you just need to let your followers know you’ve changed names, and search on your old name for a few weeks in case you’ve won a prize.
4. Tart up your profile page
A promoter might pop to your profile before deciding if you’re a winner – so make sure it looks good. Upload a profile photo (the default ‘egg’ rarely wins) and ideally a cover photo – if you’re not camera shy, use a photo of yourself. Add an entertaining bio and pin a fun non-comping tweet to the top of your profile – tap the three dots under an existing tweet to do this.
5. Follow local companies
Find and follow all your favourite local bars, restaurants, shopping centres, theatres, magazines, radio stations and cinemas on Twitter – most of them will do regular giveaways, and local Twitter comps get very few entries! The benefit of following smaller, local businesses is that they usually follow you back – and the more followers you have, the less likely you are to be filtered by Twitter. Add the companies to a Twitter list too. Tweet using your hometown hashtag and you’ll get new followers that way too!
6. Use Twitter search to find competitions
Don’t just look at your news feed and Twitter lists for comps. Use Twitter advanced search at www.twitter.com/search-advanced. Specify hashtags, dates, tweet types, or even restrict your search near a certain location. You can search for all sorts – try combining words like win, competition, prize, then add Instagram, reply, Facebook, blog depending on the type of comp you’re after – try your wish list prizes and your local town too. When you get your results, make sure to select Latest to see all recent tweets – enter right away, or Like the ones to check out later on. Happy with the results? Save by clicking More Options > Save Search and you can choose it as an option any time you start typing in the Twitter search box.
7. Ditch the notifications
If you use a phone to tweet, turn off distracting notifications – it really doesn’t matter who’s retweeted you! Go to Settings (the cog on your profile), then Notifications and turn off retweets and likes. The only notifications worth getting are messages – but I opt to turn off Mobile Notifications entirely in my iPhone settings and check the app regularly instead. If you lose the notifications, you’ll have less distractions and be able to concentrate on the comps!
8. Download TweetDeck
Tweetdeck is amazing – but you can only use it in a browser, so it only really works well on a computer. It shows you a set of scrolling columns, which can be your feed, mentions, messages, a Twitter list, a search, or a user. At the top of each column you can filter the content, even specifying a location or date range. It’s really useful for following a hashtag – for example, if you’re at a Twitter party, or for finding competitions that aren’t hosted on Twitter (try the words Facebook, Instagram, Blog, TikTok in your search columns).
9. Track hashtags
A hashtag is a topic that you can follow on Twitter by clicking it – #RedNoseDay, #BlueMonday, #WorldBookDay, #Halloween etc. Searching for a relevant hashtag along with the word win or competition should give a selection of results. Twitter parties have unique hashtags – tweet with the hashtag during the party (they generally last an hour, so entry numbers are low) and you can win prizes. TopCashback, Britmums and UKMumsTV host regular parties in the UK – do a regular search on ‘win Twitter party’ to find out when the next one is, or subscribe to my Google Comping Calendar at http://bit.ly/CompingCalendar. Never been to one? Read my Twitter party tips. Another way to find competitions is to follow other compers and click on the hashtags they tweet!
10. Save fun photos on your phone
Lots of my own Twitter wins involve tweeting a photo, so I have folders saved on my iPhone with competition photos and fun selfies in – so if I spot a comp while I’m at the bus stop, I can enter there and then. For Halloween, Mothers Day and Christmas you can guess exactly what promoters will be asking for, so set up folders of pumpkins, mum selfies and Christmas jumper photos. If you don’t win, you can always go back and delete your tweet – then use the photo again for another competition!
Finally, make sure you log in to Twitter as often as you can, because it’s fast moving and some giveaways don’t hang around for long!
Did you enjoy these tips? You might enjoy these too:
- How to find, enter and win Twitter competitions
- How to use Twitter lists
- 10 tips to win more prizes on Instagram
- 10 tips to win more prizes on Facebook
And of course, you could buy my SuperLucky Secrets book for lots more tips!
Hi di good tips,if a comp asks for you to retweet with a comment or reply, does that mean retweet then message or quote tweet,i have always thought it was quote tweet lol.so maybe where im going wrong,many thanks jo
If it’s a quote tweet they want, they will specify that in the instructions. If a quote tweet is NOT mentioned, then retweet as normal, AND reply. Reason being – a quote tweet won’t show in the promoter’s mentions, and a reply will! There’s an explanation in this post > https://superlucky.me/are-you-entering-retweet-comps-correctly
Help me to win more prizes from twitter
Pleased
May i ask about how someone who do giveaway in her tweet acc. She is using twrench for picking the winners. And if I’m not wrong that can’t with join at last as i can, not like tweetdraw. So are you know wiyh twrench?
Any tips so I can be chosen on twitter picker or picknava?
Im almost about a month joining twitter giveaway but never been win
Is there a list where I can use other members for tagging in on twitter like you do for instagram. I don’t have any of my friends on twitter like I do Facebook as I only use it for comping. And I’m starting to find the promoters asking for me to tag friends?
I have a Twitter list of my Lucky Learners group – they’re all compers that don’t mind being retweeted so I’m sure you could tag them too! https://twitter.com/SuperLuckyDi/lists/lucky-learners/members
the link seems to be broken. is there a Facebook link with people who don’t mind being tagged.
found link on facebook now thanks
I think the link above probably doesn’t work on mobile Amanda – but you can always find it by going to my profile (@superluckydi) and going to my LISTS.
Thanks for the tips, I am loving your site 🙂 do you find entering comps at the last min gives you more chance? it doesn’t seem to make a difference with me i’m unlucky with twitter and FB (rafflecopters are my friend <3) so just wondered what your opinion was. I did get a win on twitter today and used your tip of interacting with the company 🙂 my trolls mad daughter is a happy bunny.
It all depends on if they’re choosing a winner fairly or not, to be honest! And usually we don’t know. But I always recommend entering as late as possible, so if you have stalkers then it’s too late for them all to copy you!
Hello Di, we did read this a while back but it’s worth reading once again. As a promoter of weekly prize draws we’d have to ignore point 4 – Tart up your profile page! We aim to run our prize draws entirely fair and totally random. We don’t ‘select’ a winner but instead they are picked entirely at random…just as the rules dictate. So whether you have a full blown bio with 25K followers or a simple egg because you’re a Twitter newbie, it makes no difference. First qualifying entrant that’s selected by the random generator is the winner.
Hello! An interesting read with some great tips. The way you write makes me think you’d assume that most RTs giveaways are not random, but chosen by the company based on following/interests! I do wonder if you RT too early, your entry gets lost – which will explain why I haven’t won anything yet! Also, does RTing several times make it more likely to win? I always assumed that you’re only ever allowed to do one RT entry!
You can only click the retweet button once on a tweet – if you click again, it will undo the retweet. But so many promoters send out multiple tweets about the same comp, unless there are T&Cs stating you can’t, you’re fine to retweet each one. The question is – are they collating entries together from every post (this is hard unless they’re using paid software) or just picking ONE of their tweets, then choosing from the RTs on that one? It’s best to retweet every post just in case!
Great tips as always, Di. Twitter and blog comps make up most of my winnings. I just freshened up my twitter with a nice cover and profile photo, and will start tweeting more original tweets so I won’t get caught in the spam filter. Hopefully that will help promoters choose me more often!
Fab tips as usual Di! Have not been on Twitter long so am learning slowly!! I searched #BlueMonday WIN yesterday as you suggested and bingo!! I won some spa vouchers with a photo reply!! Definitely going to search for my wish list too!
Congratulations! I won two #BlueMonday Twitter comps, both were entries where I tagged a Twitter friend!
Great article Di! Do you know if theres a way to filter your feed on twitter so that only local companies etc appear? Or if you can filter these into a list? I follow thousands of twitter accounts and find it difficult to wade through it all sometimes!
Yes you could! I use lists on Twitter – for local companies, kids companies, local compers, creative compers and more. I do prefer doing a regular search for my local Brighton comps though (or use a Tweetdeck column). When you follow a company, look for similar users that Twitter recommends – you can find some good local businesses that way!
thanks Di! is there a way you can search within your lists?
I wish there was! :/
After a bit of investigation, I discovered that the filters at the top of columns in Tweetdeck can search your list for the word ‘win’. YouTube video coming soon about this!
Good points Di, question, is there a way to get it in order, as I get times and dates all mixed up. Thanks
Do you mean on your news feed Lisa, or when you search? On a search – click LIVE to see things in date order. The problem is – you’re likely to see lots of retweets, which will look like old posts but they will appear in the order they’ve been retweeted – so a comp from November might suddenly appear at the top of your feed because a comper RT’ed it!
Thanks Di.
It’s true for me about entering Twitter competitions late on. I won one on Friday as a last minute entrant and back in November won by entering with a minute to go!
Just looked on advanced found I wasn’t following the local theatre and ended up spending money booking tickets, couldn’t see a competition for them, one happy hubby.
interesting about having a short name. on the subject of names I often wonder if your name helps you win, as they know about your hobby 🙂
I think the name @superluckydi is more likely to put promoters off than appeal to them – there are even a couple that have blocked me! On the other hand, there will be companies that favour me because I have a lot of followers and they know I’ll tweet about the prize – so it probably evens itself out in the long run!
Oooh.some good tips there..i will definitely be using some of them x
Very interesting Di thank you I’m one of the people who doesn’t win a lot on twitter but do do a lot of what you suggest thank you will keep trying ☺
Thank you Di – these are great tips (sorry I know I shouldn’t just say GREAT lol)