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Debenhams Twitter

Competing for social buzz – but is it always the end goal?

By Jasmine Jaume

May 16, 2013 | 6 min read

Twitter is frequently used as a platform for brands to run competitions as a cost-effective means of increasing their online exposure. But how effective are retweet competitions, and should brands be looking beyond buzz as their key driver? Jasmine Jaume, community manager at Brandwatch, gives insights into some research on the topic.

Back in late 2012 we at Brandwatch decided to try and get a better understanding of what the Twitter landscape looks like on a whole – rather than in the distinct segments we had typically explored previously. To do this we took a random sample of 14,000 UK tweets and examined them against a variety of topics, from tweeter types to the difference between the way that men and women tweet. We also focused on brand activity within our sample, looking at the ways brands are behaving and engaging and at the different tactics they are employing to do so – one of which was the running of competitions.

It makes sense for brands to use Twitter competitions as a cheap and effective way to gain followers and increase online exposure. Debenhams, for example, regularly uses competitions to drum up excitement around the brand, as you can see from the graph below, which charts the buzz volumes around mentions of the brand. On the days the competitions took place, there was an 84 per cent increase in volume of interactions – a pretty hefty rise.

Creating buzz, however, isn’t always the end goal. For many brands, one of the key aims of Twitter competitions isn’t just to gain more followers for the brand but to turn those followers into paying customers in the long term. With that goal in mind, attracting the right types of Twitter author is crucial.Competitions may increase retweets and followers, but the majority of the accounts entering are being created by users purely to tweet entries to competitions and deals. In many cases these accounts are not used for social networking on an ongoing basis, meaning that they typically have fewer followers. This can have a big impact on the success of RT raffles, which are the most common type of Twitter competition. The theory goes that retweeting a brand exposes that brand to a new set of followers. However, if these retweeters are only engaging with the competition for the sake of getting freebies, and have few followers, then the brand is failing in its aim to engage with new followers and potentially attract new customers. Not only this, but the approach also means that brands are missing out on gaining wider reach. In line with the age old quest for quality over quantity, getting people to enter a competition is not just a numbers game. Social media is seen by many as a buzz amplifier, yet if those entering the competition have few followers, the brand’s name and message will not get very far. The graph below uses the same data set as that in the graph above, however it charts the average number of followers per tweet, rather than tweet volume alone.
This graph shows that authors who only enter competitions tend to be far less influential than those who don’t. To be more precise, non-competition authors have an average of eight times as many followers as those who enter at least one competition. In light of this, brands need to be careful about how they go about gaining competition entrants so that they are not associated with hollow/spam accounts which are a waste of their efforts or, worse still, could be damaging to their reputation.Further evidence of the same issue is demonstrated when looking at a recent competition run by the jeweler Goldsmiths to win a watch. Whilst the competition resulted in an increase in mentions during the week it was run, the average followers of those entering the competition was up to nine times less than those mentioning the brand in non-competition tweets. Of those tweeters entering the retweet competition, 60 per cent had fewer than 500 followers. Compare this to non-competition tweets and we see that 42 per cent have fewer than 500 followers. Upon further examination, you can also see that many of the retweeters enter multiple competitions and use Twitter for very little, if anything, else. Even those who enter competitions and do have a relatively large following are often, on closer inspection, not valuable to the brand either, as they are compulsive competition entrants and their followers follow them in order to do the same. Take the Twitter account of ‘retrhydd’ as an example. This user’s bio clearly states “I love tweeter competitions so don’t follow if you dont like your timeline full with comps”, and while he or she has attracted nearly 500 followers, many of these are fellow competition seekers. And so the issue becomes expounded. In the two years four months the account has existed, it has tweeted over 46,000 times. The vast majority of these tweets are competition entries, sent out hundreds of times and day and ranging from an iPad to tea and lipgloss.Clearly, this user is not intending to buy any of these products. Nor does he or she care about the brands. They just want the thrill of winning, or the free stuff, or both. Not exactly your ideal follower! What we’re trying to demonstrate here is that while retweet competitions can be effective in driving exposure to a certain degree, brands would benefit much more from running competitions that actively engage current or new followers, rather than just retweeting. This would ensure maximum exposure and engagement with the right type of tweeters – which is ultimately what brands want.So before you launch your next Twitter engagement drive, stop and think about how you go about it – why not try a competition that will encourage participants to actively engage, such as caption competitions, photo competitions, creating slogans and so on, rather than the easy and passive action of retweeting. Taking this approach is likely to be much more valuable.

Debenhams Twitter

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