On Feb. 10, we announced Communiqué PR would host a Twitter contest in conjunction with the firm’s sixth anniversary.

The idea for the contest came after Jennifer Gehrt participated at the Enterprise Social 2.0: Rip or ROI? event in Amsterdam. There, she heard executives with Kodak, Dominos and others share details about contests held via social media to drive buzz and awareness. These well-known brands saw social media contests increase brand awareness and facilitate deeper engagement with key audiences.

We decided to experiment with our own contest to see if we could achieve similar results on a smaller scale, while also gaining valuable experience we could leverage on behalf of our clients. Our objectives were to drive awareness and sales of “Strategic Public Relations: 10 Principles to Harness the Power of PR,” and increase visibility of Communiqué PR.

The contest took place on Fri., Feb. 12. Throughout the day, we asked eight trivia questions. The answers to each question could be found on the Communiqué PR Web site or our blog. The first two correct responders received a copy of “Strategic Public Relations.” Dan Greenfield, organizer of PRMKTG Camp, also graciously offered a free ticket to the upcoming Seattle event as a prize for the first correct response to the final question of the day.

Given our objectives, we knew it would be important to reach individuals that are interested in public relations, marketing and communication, so we intentionally selected prizes that would appeal to that audience versus a broad consumer audience. Offering something such as a new iPod might have increased the overall number of followers, but those individuals may not be interested in PR.

To measure the impact of the contest we monitored,

• Sales of “Strategic Public Relations;”
• The number of new followers of @CommuniquePR; and,
• Web traffic to the Communiqué PR Web site.

In addition to these immediate results, we are continually tracking reviews and blog mentions of “Strategic Public Relations” from contest winners who receive and read our book.

The initial results from our contest were as follows:

• Sales of “Strategic Public Relations” increased during and following the contest. On Feb. 12, the day of the contest, we saw “Strategic Public Relations” climb Amazon’s list of bestselling PR books to number 27 up from 100+ on the hour-by-hour sales rankings list. Since our contest, sales have continued to increase. On Feb. 17, “Strategic Public Relations” was listed number 10 on Amazon’s best selling PR books.

• Followers of @CommuniquePR have increased by approximately 7 percent. The decision to offer prizes that appeal more narrowly to our target audience seemed to be a good decision as a large majority of our new followers appear to be interested in PR, marketing and communication.

• In addition to new followers, we have seen more conversations about “Strategic Public Relations” and an increased level of engagement with individuals via the @CommuniquePR handle.

• We did not see a marked change in the Web traffic on our site, although site traffic has been unusually high since being mentioned on HARO.

Besides the 16 books and the cost of shipping the books to the contest winners, the only other costs associated with executing the contest was the time of our team. Although, I will add that the time to develop, promote and monitor the contest were not insignificant.

Overall, we felt the contest was a success; however, it is too early to say if we will host a similar contest on our seventh anniversary. In the meantime, we will capture additional feedback and monitor for additional results, such as book reviews from the contest winners who won copies of “Strategic Public Relations.”

We gathered valuable information from our experience hosting a contest on Twitter. If you are interested in  learning more about our experience or need counsel on conducting your own Twitter contest please contact us.