Many companies are realizing how they can increase their social media following by holding a giveaway. Giveaways are a great way to generate interest in your brand and increase your overall exposure.

Some companies hold a giveaway on Twitter and only think of the exposure it will bring them on Twitter, but holding a giveaway on Twitter can actually do so much more for your business. Not only can it increase overall awareness, but it actually has the potential of increasing your search engine optimization efforts, teach you about your customers and build relationships. The only way that you can reap all of the benefits from your giveaway is to run a smart promotion, and the following tips will help ensure you do just that.

Have all of your details worked out before your giveaway is launched.
Some companies make the mistake in acting first and thinking later, and this is not a smart idea. If you want to be successful, you need to plan out your giveaway in detail before you launch it. Know what day you want the promotion to start and what day you want it to end. Know all of your rules. Meet with a lawyer and have them look over the rules to ensure that you are not held liable for anything and that your rules are spelled out perfectly clear. You should also know how the winner will be chosen (randomly vs. through a vote), how you will notify the winner and how they will receive their prize. When you have all of this planned out, you will not come across any surprises, and you will be able to stay on schedule.

Designate an extra team.
When you launch a giveaway through Twitter, you can expect to see a lot more traffic and interaction occurring on your feed. It is very important that you staff additional employees to monitor your feed and respond to customer inquiries and comments. If your giveaway receives widespread attention and you don’t have the manpower to provide top notch customer service, these customers are not going to have a good experience with your giveaway, which looks poorly on your company.

Create a landing page.
A landing page can be the hub of your giveaway. It can provide details on the promotion as well as contain pertinent news and updates for those who entered. This can also be the main link that your Twitter followers use to spread the word about the promotion, thus giving your site more traffic.

Create hashtags.
Twitter is notorious for hashtags, and if you don’t create them for your competition, you run the risk of having your participants create them for you. Make sure to use the hashtag in your own tweets about the contest, and make sure to put the hashtag on your landing page so that everyone can be on the same page.

Monitor the giveaway.
Make sure that you’re monitoring the giveaway and tracking results. Know how many new followers you received since the giveaway started as well as how many times your links and your hashtags were used. You can also use this information to gain demographics on those involved. For example, did your giveaway reach users across the globe? If your giveaway consisted of handing out hundreds or thousands of coupons or coupon codes, make sure that you also track how many of these are redeemed.

Build relationships.
Once the giveaway is over, reach out to those users who were prominent promoters of your giveaway and try and build a relationship with them. Having them as a brand ambassador can ensure that they have continued loyalty to your company.

Twitter giveaways are not only about building more followers—it’s also about making your customers happy, boosting your SEO, learning about your audience and building results.

Lucy Smith from Marketing Resources specializes in administering game promos. Lucy lives in Chicago with her two labs and a cat named lucky.