From The Contest Queen

Twitter Support sent me an email with a link to the following post: I can’t find myself in Twitter search! They suggested I follow the guidelines outlined to keep myself searchable, which would make me less searchable based on my tweeting pattern (see Twitter Thinks Contests are SPAM), AND they may close my account based on those tweets!

I quote:

We suggest that you stay away from:
* Posting duplicate content (links or tweets)
* Misuse of hashtags (words followed by the ‘#’ sign)
* Sending automated tweets or replies
* Using bots or applications to post similar messages based on keywords
* Posting  similar messages over several accounts
* Abusing trending topics
* Aggressively following and un-following people (a common spam tactic)
* Re-posting public content without attribution to the author

Twitter may automatically remove accounts engaging in these behaviors from search in order to ensure the best experience for everyone.

I will continue to talk to Twitter Support and see if this issue can’t be resolved, as it doesn’t just affect me. If it is affecting you too, please put in support request.  The more of us that do it may prompt Twitter to resolve the problem that much sooner.

As I stated in my last blog post, I am currently “invisible” on Twitter.  So, why am I not to be found in searches.

The answer seems to lie with Twitter’s own rules.  They specifically state that; If your updates consist mainly of links, and not personal updates; your account could be suspended because it is considered SPAM.

So, what do I tweet that could be considered “spammy”?  My tweets consist of contesting tips and tricks, with links to various parts of my website, such as:

5 easy steps to start finding, entering & winning #contests & #sweepstakes http://bit.ly/4M4CI #win

Automatically be entered into my bi-weekly #contest – subscribe to The Winning EDGE http://bit.ly/cpMfP #win #sweepstakes

or promotion of various events I am a part of, such as:

Join me on Oct 3 in #Ottawa – How To Win Cash, Cars, Trips & More! http://bit.ly/Fkl0Y beginners, contestors & marketers welcome

Did you know there was an annual sweepstakes convention? The 21st one will be held in Bloomington MN SEP 1-5, 2010 http://bit.ly/SzgG1

or retweets (RT) of contests and sweepstakes posted by people and companies I follow, such as:

RT @FeistyFrugal Book giveaway 5 copies http://bit.ly/3933NH Trying to get pregnant?

RT @ContestsGuide Today’s new sweeps are up, with a chance at a Camaro, a $20,000 scholarship, and more: http://bit.ly/7coU1

or my own Twitter contest entries, such as:

#WIN an iPod Touch (tweet) or Macbook Pro (pic contest) by putting #rummikubiphone in your tweet. http://bit.ly/576I8 Read full rules.

NEW iPhone 3GS Giveaway contest. #WIN by following @WeekinRewind and RETWEET often. http://xr.com/nq4 He follows back everyone! GOOD LUCK!

and “yogurt” tweets, such as:

having tea with a friend @starbucks, nice to have adult conversation

off to get the Prize Princess from day camp, tweet more later!

What I find very curious is, if you go to Twitter and type in the word sweepstakes or contest in the search field on the home page of the same terms in the Find People field, my Twitter account will not appear, yet dozens of other people and companies doing exactly what I am doing are listed.

More amazing is the fact 57% of the tweets by Fortune 100 companies are contests!

I recently discovered I was “invisible” on Twitter.  It began when I did a few searches on myself.

When I did a search for Carolyn Wilman, I only found the personal account I set up originally and have since deleted.  I then did a search for Contest Queen, and I was not found at all.

I then performed hashtag searches.  If I tweeted something with a # (hashtag) and then did a search on that hashtag, such as #WIN, #contest or #sweepstakes, my tweet does not appear.

Now, this issue is important because, if you are on Twitter, and are entering Twitter-based contests, ensure you do these searches for yourself, because if you too are “invisible”, depending on how the contest is setup, your hashtag entries will not appear or be counted/entered.

If you discover you are “invisible”, you must file your issue with Twitter Support to get it resolved. It may take several weeks.

If you are following me on Twitter (@ContestQueen) please be kind enough to retweet (RT) a few of my tweets, so more people are aware of me. Thank you.

One of the main four objections marketers must overcome when persuading people to enter their contest is: “I don’t enter because they are scams.”

So why do people think contests are scams?  Companies in the United States spent over $2 billion last year running legitimate promotions giving away hundreds of millions of dollars away in prizes.

People think contests are scams because when famous business people, like Gene Simmons (@genesimmons), hold a contest and then do not award the prize, it seems like a scam.

Last April, KISS announced a contest. Fans would vote and the North American cities with the most votes would have a KISS concert held in their city. (Prelude to a KISS concert.)  The city of Oshawa ON came out on top and won the contest by having the most votes (14,569).

Today, KISS announced their “First Ever Fan-Routed Tour” concert schedule. Oshawa wasn’t on the list. What?!  It seems that the band has not chosen to honor their own contest. Instead, they selected more “traditional” cities and venues. (Oshawa’s KISS good-bye.)

The rock icon could not be reached for comment but a band spokesman said “a few situations” required placing shows in neighbouring market concert venues.

“This was necessary to make sure that all regional fans get a chance to see KISS with the band’s full stage production,” said spokesman Erik Stein.

In other words, KISS can’t make as much money on Oshawa or Sault Ste. Marie as they can in major markets, such as Toronto.

So, what was the point of holding the contest, when they never had any intention of awarding the prize?

Every marketer can now thank Gene Simmons for making their job, just that much harder.

NOTE: One hour after I blogged about the lack of a concert, KISS announced it would play in Oshawa after all.  I find it interesting they had to receive international negative publicity before they fulfilled their prize commitment.

I am on the main volunteer convention organization committee for the 21st Annual National Sweepstakes Convention (taking place in Bloomington, MN from September 1-5, 2010).

We are seeking sponsors, speakers, and prize donations from individuals, judging agencies, marketing companies and corporations.  If you are interested in participating in any capacity, please email me.

Registration is open, not just for sweepstakes enthusiasts, but promotional professionals and corporate marketers.  Registration will close once attendance reaches 1000 or August 1st 2010, whichever comes first.

Hope to see you there!

Good question. Why do companies run sweepstakes and contests?

As I discussed in my blog post Where Do “Sweepers” Come From?, companies find them to be a great marketing tool. Sponsoring sweepstakes and contests has gone from being a $15,000 annual industry to almost a $2 billion industry in 100 years.  No wonder more and more people are partaking in the hobby.

We know what we get out of it. Prizes! So what do the companies get for all their promotional marketing dollars?  Many things, including:

• attracting attention to the brand, product or service;
• increased sales;
• maintain or increase customer loyalty;
• increase their customer and prospect databases;
• and to begin permission marketing.

It is important to support the sponsors in all ways.  Buy their products, visit their websites, sign-up for their newsletters and tell your friends about them.  When companies deem their promotions to be successful, they will run more.

It’s a win-win situation, and who doesn’t like that?!

Nissan Canada and Capital C began with a great idea. To have the biggest contest in Canadian history by giving away 50 cars! Sadly, it turned into the biggest contest fiasco in Canadian history.  From my perspective, all the problems stem from poor promotional design combined with even poorer promotion execution.

If you are unaware of the promotion, it went something like this: create a “hyper” webpage, judges would select 500 finalists, the finalists would use social media and social networking to garner votes, the top 50 would win a car.  (FULL RULES)  Sounds simple enough.

There were far too many problems with the contest that occurred for me to blog about them.  Here are a few links to the webpages and blogs relating to the Nissan Hypercube contest and all its failings.

Encyclopedia Dramatica Hypercube

Iggabod’s Blog

Madame Sunny’s Blog

Wired Cola’s Blog

Marketing Magazine is writing an article on the contest.  If you have been affected by the promotion, or have comments on the contest and you would like to voice your opinion, please contact Matt Semansky directly before Friday August 7th.

There are millions of people that enter contests and sweepstakes on a daily basis as a hobby.  So the question begs, how are “sweepers” created?  Where do they come from?  Why would anyone choose to spend hours on end entering countless contests and sweepstakes?  (For definitions of contestor, sweeper or comper, read What is a Contestor?)

Let us start with the marketers. The first games of chance were lotteries.  These dated back to ancient times.  In about 1900, contest giveaways began to enter the American marketplace.  The value of all the prizes given away totaled $15,000.  By 1910, $500,000 in prizes were given away and there were about 100,000 contestors. By the 1930s marketers saw the value of running a contest as a marketing tool.  By the end of that decade, the dollar value of giveaways soared to $100 million and there were 12 million contestors.

In the 1950s and 1960s, contests were in their heyday. (Read The Prize Winner of Defiance Ohio.) During that time there was a shift from contests to sweepstakes.  Sweepstakes were far easier to enter than contests.  The number of sweepers, again, soared.  By the 1980s there were 20 million sweepers.  By the new millennium there were 55 million sweepers.  In 2007 companies in the United States spent $1.89 billion on giveaways and that number is expected to triple.  We can only expect a rise in the number of hobbyists.

I call it “Contest Crack”. One win and you are hooked.  The marketers created these wonderful promotions giving away amazing prizes.  I usually goes something like this: You may enter on a lark.  You win.  Then you begin to wonder, “What else can I win?”.  A sweeper is born.

Another way a sweeper is born, is by watching their friends.  Many of my friends began entering on a regular basis after they saw me win many prizes and thought to themselves, “Well, it is so easy for her to win, why can’t I?”  I don’t know anyone who hasn’t begun to enter contests and sweepstakes on a consistant basis, that didn’t begin to win on a consistant basis.

If you want to know how to begin winning, click here: GETTING STARTED.

After giving it a few days thought, I have decided to use this blog as a teaching tool.  Each day’s post will deal with one aspect of promotional marketing.  I will write from the perspective of both a contestor and a promotional marketer.

The first topic I will tackle is: what is a contestor?
(Excerpts from You Can’t Win If You Don’t Enter.)

Profession or Hobby?

pro·fes·sion·al (prә-fĕsh^/ә-nәl)

adj. 1. a. Of, relating to, engaged in, or suitable for a profession: lawyers, doctors, and other professional people.

b. Conforming to the standards of a profession: professional behavior.

2. Engaging in a given activity as a source of livelihood or as a career: a professional writer.

3. Performed by persons receiving pay: professional football.

4. Having or showing great skill; expert: a professional repair job.

n. 1. A person following a profession, especially a learned profession.

2. One who earns a living in a given or implied occupation: hired a professional to decorate the house.

3. A skilled practitioner; an expert.

hob·by (hŏb^/ē)

n. pl. hob·bies An activity or interest pursued outside one’s regular occupation and engaged in primarily for pleasure.

Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Adapted and reproduced by permission from the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition.

What is an enthusiastic contestor called? I have been called a professional contestor. The term makes me uncomfortable because a professional is an expert in a specific field and is usually well paid for their skill and knowledge. I consider contesting to be a hobby because 1) it is not my occupation, 2) I do it for pleasure, and 3) I certainly could not live off my winnings.

There are several terms used globally to describe someone who enters contests on a regular basis. In Canada we refer to ourselves as contestors because we enter contests. In the United States they refer to themselves as sweepers because they enter sweepstakes. (If we did that in Canada, people would think we were curlers!) In the United Kingdom and Australia they refer to themselves as competitors because they enter competitions. As Shakespeare said, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” My favorite term to describe my hobby is winner!

NOTE: You may have noticed that I have spelled the word contestor with an OR as opposed to an ER. There is a reason for this. I created the word contestor because the proper definition of a contester is someone who is protesting or disputing something. We’re trying to win cars and big-screen TVs here, not contest a will!

con·testor (kŏn^/tĕst^/әr)

n. 1. One who enters contests, sweepstakes, competitions, lotteries and raffles.

con·testing (kŏn^/tĕst^/)

v. 1. The act of entering contests.

con·test (kŏn^/tĕst^/)

n. 1. A struggle for superiority or victory between rivals.

2. A competition, especially one in which entrants perform separately and are rated by judges. See Synonyms at conflict.

con·test·ed, con·test·ing, con·tests (kәn^/tĕst^/) (kŏn^/tĕst^/)

v. tr. 1. To compete or strive for.

2. To call into question and take an active stand against; dispute or challenge:
contest a will. See Synonyms at oppose.

v. intr. 1. To struggle or compete; contend:
contested with other bidders for the antique.

Probably from French conteste, from contester, to dispute, from Old French, to call to witness, from Latin contestari : com-, com- + testis, witness; see trei —in Appendix I.

con·test a·ble adj.

con tes·ta tion (kŏn^/tĕ-stā^/shәn) n.

con·test er n.

con·tes·tant (kәn-tĕs^/tәnt, kŏn^/tĕs^/tәnt)

n. 1. One taking part in a contest; a competitor.

2. One that contests or disputes something, such as an election or a will.

Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Adapted and reproduced by permission from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition.

What a fire storm on the Internet this past weekend! I was sent a few emails regarding a blog post that was bashing sweepers.  So off I went to investigate…

Chad Essley decided to run a sweepstakes on his website Cartoon Monkey (@mrcartoonmonkey) I am assuming by the rant he posted on his blog, he has little or no marketing experience therefore was overwhelmed by the end result of the promotion. For some reason, at the end of his rant, he targeted me.  After I read his posts, I decided that maybe if he had a little help, his next promotion would go better and he would have a change of heart, so I posted the following comment:

Hello,
You obviously do not follow me or what I preach regarding finding, entering and winning sweepstakes, because I teach people to only enter for prizes they really want to win, or as a gift for a loved one.

If you run a sweepstakes without having designed it properly from a marketing or promotional legal standpoint, you will get everyone, and I do mean everyone, entering.
(I wrote a blog post about this very issue in May of 2008 called A Marketer’s Dilemma.)

I imagine you are a small company without the budget to afford to hire a promotional marketing consultant, like myself, a judging agency to run your sweepstakes or a promotional lawyer to write your rules.

Even though you have taken the time to bash myself and all my friends, I will give you some free marketing advice that you can actually use to run your next promotion.

Begin by using a service like Strutta.com (@strutta) or WildFireApp.com (@wildfireapp) to host your contest. They each have formats in place to allow you to setup various styles of contests, including judged ones, along with having all the legal rules pre-written, so you don’t get yourself sued.

As for the use of sweepstakes as a marketing tool; if companies did not find it so effective in reaching their target market to would not be growing to an almost $6 billion industry by 2012. The trick is, again, to design the promotion properly.

Consider listening to a few of my online radio shows where I interview the software developers, marketers and judging agencies to learn about sweepstakes from the “other side of the table”. I think it would also help you better design your next giveaway.

I wish you luck with your business.
Feel free to contact me with any questions you may have,
Carolyn
@ContestQueen

Well, it seems that Chad, not only deleted my response, he followed it up with another nasty comment.  At this point I re-read his original rant regarding how he conducted his sweepstakes and realized his actions were, in fact, ILLEGAL!  He did not conduct a random draw. Chad removed, what he deemed, to be the “inappropriate” entries, and then selected a winner from the remaining ones.

Therefore I have reported him to the proper legal authorities (Oregon Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Comission and Consumer Affairs) and I am asking you to do the same.  I believe this incidence requires proper investigation to determine, if in fact, any wrong doing was committed.

I will post any further findings as I receive them.

NOTE: Chad has deleted his original post and all it’s comments, so the link in the second paragraph goes to a PDF and not directly to his site.