Running an online contest or giveaway is a truly outstanding promotional tactic. Contests are perfect for engaging your audience, finding new leads, growing your following and driving a huge array of meaningful actions that can help you reach all of your business goals.

An important component of running a contest that is massively overlooked is promoting the contest. It doesn't matter how well designed your contest may be, if people don't know about, they won't enter it. It's as simple as that.

It's crucial that you do everything you can to promote your campaign and expose it to the biggest audience you can. There are tons of different channels you can use to promote your contest, and Twitter just may be the most powerful when it comes to reaching a huge audience, promoting your contest and encourage social sharing.

To help you get your own promotional efforts underway we're going to take you through all the best tips and strategies for promoting your contest on Twitter.

If you want to make sure your Twitter following is aware of your contest then the best thing you can do is simply announce it on Twitter. This will clue your following in to your campaign, encourage entry and kickstart the social sharing of your contest.

When you announce your contest on Twitter there's a lot you'll need to make sure you're doing in order to get the best possible results, but don't you worry, we've got all the tips and tactics you need to successfully promote your contest on Twitter right here.

The best way to run an online contest or giveaway is to run them on a dedicated page on your website, or on a hosted landing page if you don't have a website.

This allows you to run a better contest which drives more powerful actions with a platform like Gleam Competitions and drive traffic towards it from numerous online sources including Twitter.

Twitter gives you 280 characters to use in all your Tweets, and it's important that you're putting them to work to make your contest as appealing as possible. Your copy needs to describe your prize and let users know how exactly how they can enter your campaign, but it also needs to catch peoples attention and get them excited. Use colourful language, include emojis, open with a bold "GIVEAWAY ALERT". The more engaging your copy is the better.

Tweets with an accompanying image stand out a lot more than plain text. When you post about your contest on Twitter you should be sure to always include an accompanying image.

You can use an image to put your prize on full display, or create a graphic which highlights what your contest is, how users can enter it, and what they stand to win.

When you upload a photo to Twitter you want to make sure that it looks good. You should always try to ensure that images you upload are 1024px wide. This will ensure they display at high-quality across all devices.

As well as using images to liven up your promotional Tweets, you can also try to use some videos or gifs as well. Videos and gifs are incredibly eye-catching, engaging, and can be a great way to visually display all the key information users need to know about your contest.

You can use videos to showcase the value of your prize, explain how to enter your contest, and get people excited in a way only visually stimulating videos can.

At the end of the day, the driving factor behind people entering your contest will be your prize. Offering up a prize people are eager to get their hands on and willing to complete actions for a chance to win it is the best thing you can do to encourage entry.

Because of this, it's incredibly important that you make your prize the focus of your promotional efforts. Use images, videos and descriptive language to highlight your prize and all of its benefits. You want to make it as alluring as possible.

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If you run a photo contest which requires users to submit a specified image in order to enter then it's a good idea to share some of the best submissions on Twitter for the duration of the campaign.

This will help get people in the spirit of your contest, give users inspiration for their own submissions and encourage entry.

Using hashtags in your promotional Tweets can be a great way to sync your campaign (and brand) with trending topics and reach a wider audience. You can try using hashtags such as #contest, #giveaway and #win.

If there's a popular hashtag associated with you prize then you should definitely attach that to all of your Tweets. If not, you can tag the Twitter account most associated with the prize.

If your contest requires users to send out a Tweet or submit a photo then you should create your own campaign specific hashtag. This will allow you to easily track entries and help build awareness and recognition.

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Syncing up a contest with a holiday or a special event is a great way to capitalise on the excitement holidays bring to drive a whole lot of enthusiastic entries.

Even if the holiday is only tangentially related to your giveaway, getting in on the holiday cheers and using some relevant hashtags is a great way to give your promotional Tweets and extra level of engagement.

Tweeting about your contest before it goes live is a great way to build hype and get people excited about your campaign. If you let your following know about your contest in the lead up to its launch they are likely to pay closer attention to your posts around launch time, which will help you generated a whole lot of entries as soon as your contest goes live.

Once your contest has launched, you will need to announce it to your followers, and keep sending out daily reminders for the duration of your campaign.

Not all of your Twitter audience will see every one of your Tweets, so it's a good move to periodically send out reminders which let your users know how they can enter, what they can win, and how long they have left.

When you regularly post about your contest, it's important to make sure that you're keeping all of your Tweets fresh. If you keep posting the exact same Tweet over and over it will start to become spammy and people will get sick of it.

You should try mixing up the copy, using different images and keeping things relevant to the current situation. You can do this by mentioning how long people have left to enter, or referring to the current day or time.

This will keep things fresh and help your promotional efforts remain engaging and effective for the duration of your campaign.

When you share your first announcement Tweet for your contest you should pin it to the top of your page so it's the first thing people see when they visit you on Twitter. This will help you raise awareness and drive actions from highly relevant users.

All you have to do to pin a Tweet is open the dropdown menu in the top right corner of your Tweet and select Pin to your profile page.

When you post about your contest it's a good idea to ask your audience to follow you on Twitter and Retweet your contest announcement as part of their entry. This will allow you to consistently expose your contest to relevant new users and convert them into followers.

This will not only significantly increase the performance of your contest, but also extend your reach and give your future promotional efforts a huge boost.

When you run a contest or giveaway with Gleam you are able to award entries to users who help share your campaign with friends via Retweets and Viral Shares.

Incentivising users to spread your contest around is the perfect way to promote your contest, as it encourages highly reliable social sharing which will lead to high participation rates and allow you to connect with an audience you wouldn't have otherwise been able to reach.

Another awesome tactic for extending the promotional reach of your contest is teaming up with other brands or influencers to run a partner campaign.

Partner giveaways are for enthralling not only your existing audience, but also your partner's audience. This is an outstanding way to expose your brand to wide new audiences who are highly likely to take an interest in whatever it is you do.

You can try partnering up with a brand who offers a complimentary product and building a prize pool, or reaching out to an influencer and asking them to promote your contest in exchange for money, interesting content, or some dedicated actions in your campaign.

Your Twitter header image is essentially free advertising space that everyone who visits your profile gets exposed to. You can use this space to draw attention to your contest and make sure everyone who checks you out on Twitter knows that you're giving away an awesome prize and that they can easily enter.

The ideal size of a Twitter header image is 1500px x 500px. This will ensure optimal display on all devices. When you're designing your header image just make sure you're accounting for the space that will be occupied by your profile image.

If you use your header image to promote your contest, you should make sure you pin your contest Tweet so users can easily find your campaign.

Sending out Tweets promoting your contest is perfect for connecting with your existing audience, but if you want to extend your reach and drive contest entries from new users you may want to consider paying to promote your contest announcement Tweet.

This can help you find relevant new contest entrants who you can work to convert into followers, and even customers.

When you link off to your contest's landing page from Twitter you should try using Twitter Cards to make your link look as good as possible.

The majority of Twitter usage comes from mobile devices, so it's important that your contest functions well on mobile.

You don't want to drive a ton of mobile users to your campaign online to have them walk away as soon as they realize that your contest doesn't function properly on their device.

If you run your contest with Gleam's Competitions app your contest will be automatically optimised for mobile devices so you don't have to worry about anything holding you back when you promote your contest on Twitter.