In relation to other social media platforms, you might consider Twitter a ‘giveaway-friendly’ platform. Before jumping right in, Twitter does ask you to be mindful of a few rules. On this page, we’ll give you a digestible guide of what you can and cannot do when it comes to running a giveaway on Twitter, a breakdown of where to read more about the rules, some tips and tricks, and best practices to help you navigate Twitter’s promotion guidelines.

As Twitter’s rules change, expect this page to be updated with the latest and most up-to-date information. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask in the comments section below.

Twitter Promotion Guidelines Explained

Here, we’ll give you a quick breakdown of Twitter promotion guidelines. Continue reading below to get a better understanding of how we arrived at these five bullet points.

✔ Asking participants to Tweet, Retweet, follow a Twitter user, and post an update with a specific hashtag are all acceptable ways to run and enter a Twitter contest or giveaway.

✔ While not required, it’s a recommended practice to include your @username along with a relevant hashtag in all your promotion-related Tweets, including Tweets sent out by participants.

✔ Don’t ask your participants tweet more than once per day.

✔ Twitter doesn’t like spam. They especially don’t like automated spam. That includes duplicate messages and accounts that follow and unfollow accounts at a large scale and excessive, duplicate content. Be mindful of that.

✔ If you decide to spam, other users may block your account. If that happens, your account’s content has a lesser chance of appearing in Twitter’s search results. Even worse, your account may be suspended.

Twitter Promotion Guidelines: An In-Depth Look

While Twitter has a specific section on their support site that discusses promotion guidelines, it’s wise to become familiar with three additional sections to get the full spectrum. Here are four sections of Twitter’s policies and best practices listed on their support site that you should be mindful of before running a promotion on their platform:

• The Twitter Rules - general use agreement of Twitter’s platform
• Guidelines for Promotions on Twitter - rules specific to running a contest or sweepstakes
• Rules and Best Practices - an overview of proper Twitter etiquette
• Twitter Search Rules and Restrictions - an overview of how Twitter search works

In the sections below, we’ll break down these specific areas to help show you how we arrived at the summary of the rules stated above.

The Twitter Rules

First and before jumping into promotion-specific rules, you should be familiar with Twitter’s general rules of their platform. Read ‘The Twitter Rules’ here.

Twitter wants to make it clear that you cannot violate any of the general rules on Twitter. Because without rules, there’s chaos. This area outlines topics like trademark and copyright infringement, graphic content, and abusive behavior.

Twitter wants its users to be authentic as possible. Following and unfollowing large amounts of people, sending a large number of duplicate and unsolicited replies and mentions, and selling and purchasing account interactions are all considered spam (for obvious reasons). If it’s found that your account is being blocked by a large number of people, you will be looked at and potentially suspended. Bottom line: don’t do anything in your promotion that would cause people to block you.

Guidelines for Promotions on Twitter

Now we’ve gotten the general rules out of the way, let’s discuss the specific section in Twitter support that outlines rules specific to running sweepstakes and contests. Read the ‘Guidelines for Promotions on Twitter’ here.

Tweeting, retweeting, following a user, and posting an update with a specific hashtag are all acceptable ways to participate in a contest or giveaway (though you should keep mindful of Twitter’s rules relating to spam). Limit your promotion participants to one Tweet per day.

It’s good practice to have your @username included in any Tweet sent out by participants. Think about using a relevant hashtag for your promotion. Doing both of these will make it easier to track and view Tweet entries in Twitter search and other mediums.

Lastly, make sure you follow Twitter’s rules and other best practices, and as any platform, make sure your giveaway complies with all applicable laws.

Rules and Best Practices

It would be tough to run a contest or sweepstakes on Twitter without knowing the general etiquette of the platform. Read the ‘Rules and Best Practices’ here.

This section covers topics relating to using features of their platform in non-spammy ways. They reiterate that automated following and unfollowing are not allowed. Don’t post duplicate @replies to tons of people. And if you do want to participate in a trending topic, do so in a way to that adds to the conversation as opposed to Tweeting about something that’s unrelated to the topic.

Twitter Search Rules and Restrictions

Twitter’s search rules and restrictions page gives you a peek as to what happens behind the scenes when people search on Twitter, and the steps you can take to make sure your content has the best chance to appear in Twitter search results. Read the ‘Twitter Search Rules and Restrictions’ here.

Most of this page is devoted to reiterating that posting duplicate and automated content is bad (starting to see the pattern?). Following Twitter’s rules and best practices will give you the best chance to keep your content appearing in the search results.

This resource applies to all users on Twitter whether they are running a giveaway or not. However, it’s important to familiarize yourself with how Twitter approaches search so you can optimize the success of your giveaway.

A Statement of Release For Your Next Twitter Giveaway

Every promotion should have one! Even though it’s not strictly stated in Twitter’s terms that you need a statement of release, we recommend that you have one. Feel free to use the disclaimer verbiage in the box below for your promotion’s terms and conditions as an acting statement of release:

Twitter does not sponsor or endorse Sponsor or the Sweepstakes. This promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with Twitter. You understand that you are providing your information to the Sponsor and not to Twitter. By participating via the Twitter platform, participants are also subject to Twitter’s privacy policy and terms of use, which can be found at www.twitter.com/privacy and https://twitter.com/tos.

Questions? Join the discussion below!

If you have any questions or comments about the material above, or want to run something by us, please feel free to add to the conversation below!