A question I have been pondering recently is whether Twitter hashtag contests work. I know that’s a fairly general question and the answer would depend on the goal. What I really want to find out is if they affect ROI in a positive manner.
Let me back up for a moment and give some quick background on what a hashtag is. Like any tag it identifies what the subject of a particular message is. Hashtags were popularized on Twitter because it’s a quick way (that doesn’t take up a lot of character space) to qualify the topic of a message. It also allows for easy searching because everyone discussing a particular subject use the same term. For example I could write “Just updated my life #iphone” and you would know what I was referring to. I could also use it in reference such as “Downloading apps for my #iphone” which allows for it to be easily indexed in search. This works well for events and promotions because someone may refer to an event with one abbreviation and another person could come up with a second version – by using hashtags people can ensure that everyone is speaking about things the same way.
Many marketers have begun taking advantage of this by introducing hashtag competitions. In order to enter a contest, you simply incorporate their hashtag in your tweet. It is usually the name of the company running a contest or the particular product they are trying to promote. The ultimate goal is to get enough mentions to be listed on the Twitter search page as a trending topic. That will lead to greater visibility to twitter users who would learn about your company, perhaps visit your site, or at least participate in the contest as well and increase the buzz around your product or brand.
Recently, with the iPhone 3G mania that is gripping the nation, it seems that the biggest prize is an iphone. Both Squarespace.com and Trackle.com have been giving away an iPhone a day. All a contestant has to do is put #squarespace or #trackle into a tweet and they are entered.
Without running one of the contests myself, I don’t know what the ROI is but both Trackle.com and Squarespace.com will have spent a minimum of $6,000 each for a 30 day contest (plus employee time and cost) in order to feature in the Twitter Search trends.
There are two big drawbacks that I have observed recently to a contest like this. They are:
- You are at the mercy of news events – The Iran elections and the iPhone 3Glaunch seems to have claimed the majority of trending issues in the last few days.
- There is a short shelf life – In order to trend, you need to get a lot of people using your hashtag in a short period of time rather than spreading it out over 30 days.
To illustrate my point, I looked at the trending topics on Twitter as I was writing this post. The top 10 topics are:
- Iran
- #IranElection
- #musicmonday
- Perez Hilton
- Tim Burton’s Alice
- Neda
- Tehran
- Wonderland
- AT&T
- John Bercow
Neither #squarespace or #trackle are featured. In fact, I have not observed #trackle being in the trending topics at anytime since the inception of their competition and I saw #squarespace in their very briefly.
So back to my question, do hashtag competitions work? What do you think? It will be interesting to see if either Trackle.com or Squarespace.com runs similar competitions in the future.
[UPDATE] As of 6.22.09 Squarespace has changed the rules for their hashtag contest. They made it so you only need to enter the hashtag once and then you are entered into each day’s contest. Previously, you had to enter each day. When reading their blog, it mentions this pertinent point.
“…with this change — I hope this can become a much more non-intrusive part of everyone’s day.”
Squarespace realized that a hashtag competition is intrusive and changed the contest rules, but at the same time this will affect their ability to make it to Twitter Trends. Are they relying on the viral nature of Twitter without making it to trends? Will this negatively affect their ROI? What do you think, did you find it intrusive?
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I think if they’re done right, hashtag contests definitely work.
According to http://hashtags.org/tag/squarespace/ that campaign peaked at almost 12k mentions in one day and it’s continued to garner thousands of mentions a day since the campaign began.
Not sure how many people converted, but it’ll be interesting to see the compete data for June.
Hey Andrew…Good post.
I think you answered your own question here when you wrote, “That will lead to greater visibility to twitter users who would learn about your company, perhaps visit your site, or at least participate in the contest as well and increase the buzz around your product or brand.”
The ROI for organizations like Squarespace is really brand awareness and (hopefully) new users/revenue streams. I doubt the vast majority of people who participated in the contest even knew about Squarespace or what they offer. If for anything, they have educated a huge amount of people on their name and, cross our fingers, their business.
Is it intrusive? Well, yes, but not in a bad way. It is easy to participate, many people put a comedic spin on their #squarespace tweet and it capitalized on a popular product, the new iPhone.
If brands build similar contests that leverage popular products, they are likely to trend. The ROI is going to be self-defined even if we (strategists) don’t agree that it is a great promotion. See @orbitz’s promotion today. It seems they are defining ROI as Twitter followers. Is that a good use of Twitter or good measure of ROI? To me, no because they are trying to bait followers rather than giving them a reason to follow.
Look forward to your next post.
Found this on Webitect’s post, “5 Simple Ways Twitter Can Make You a Better Web Designer” (http://webitect.net/web-traffic/5-simple-ways-twitter-can-make-you-a-better-web-designer.php)
“In the right hand sidebar there is a list of the most popular topics on Twitter for any given day. They are called Trending Topics. At the top of this list for the first part of June 2009 was the word #squarespace. The reason? Squarespace were giving away an iPhone every day for a month if you added that word to your Tweets. The result? Squarespace experienced an avalanche of traffic and got masses of new sign ups for their blogging software packages. I was shocked to see how many of my followers set up new Squarespace blogs during this promotion.”
Hashtag contests seem to work to me!
When we look back in a few months time, hashtag competitions that revolve around tech giveaways, will appear relatively crude. I think there is scope for more inventive ways of using the hashtag competition, especially if it widens the twitter audience. I think the interesting and effective hashtag campaigns are more likely to come from the non tech sector and those that combine offsite/offline activity.