TWITTER YOUR WAY THROUGH THE RECESSION

How many times do you turn on your television to see adverts saying you can "win £1,000 by answering the following question..." or "just text a, b, or c to ***** to win a trip to the Caribbean"? Many of us simply roll our eyes because we know the chance of us winning is literally one in a million. 

However, one breed of competitions which is becoming exceedingly popular are Twitter competitions, and you'll be surprised to learn that you just might win something....

The tooth fairy may not be real, but is the freebie fairy?

Canterbury Christ Church University student, Kimberley Young, has been entering competitions on Twitter for a while now, here's what she had to say....

Twitter by kerryleigh15

Fashion for less was still slightly skeptical, so I decided to investigate and try Twitter comping for myself. 

Some of the competitions Fashion for less entered

Throughout the month of December 2011 I took ten minutes out of each day to enter whatever competitions I could find on the social networking website, and when I received my first "Congratulations you've won..." I couldn't believe my eyes. These messages would be a lot more frequent than I initially imagined. In the space of a mere month I won the following...

An item of choice from Boohoo (@boohooOfficial)

A years supply of low calorie chocolate bars from Tasty Little Numbers (@tlntweets)

That'll save me on food shopping for a while...

Fake tan from Xen Tan (@xentan_uk)

An item of choice from Desire Clothing (@DesireClothing)

A green dress from Dressrail  (@DRESSRAIL)

An item of choice from The Fashion Bible (@ukfashionbible)

My item of choice from The Fashion Bible

Mascara from Bourjois (@bourjois_uk)

£50 voucher from ASOS (@ASOS)

Blusher from UNE (@unebeautyuk)

And thank you for the free blusher!

Trousers from Tesco (@ClothingAtTesco)

Nail varnish from GOSH (@GOSHUK)

Face wash from Naked Body Care (@nakedbodycare)

Not the most exciting freebie but certainly the most useful

Not only was the thrill of receiving something free in the post exciting, but the freebies really came in handy. Things such as face wash, nail varnish, and fake tan, saved me money as they're stuff I would usually buy.

You may be wondering why so many companies are giving out free goods? Well it is all about free advertising, Twitter competitions involve re-tweeting their messages, so if one person re-tweets a message then all their followers see it and so on and so forth. Competitions where you can pick an item of choice are also really good for businesses, because sometimes when people don't win they end up buying the item anyway. 

Why not give it a go yourself?

So how do you get started? My advice would be to follow a Twitter account which is solely dedicated to comping, one of the best ones is Competition Club (@competitionclub). They will post all competitions they find on the social networking site, all you have to do from there is click 're-tweet' on the tweet of the competition you want to enter and that is it - it's really that simple. Make sure you're following the companies whose competitions you're entering, otherwise they won't be able to get in touch with you if you win. A little tip from me would be to look at how many followers the company has on Twitter, the less followers they have the more chance you have of winning.

So they're you have it - Twitter comp your way through the dreaded recession. Make sure you leave a comment below and let us know if you win anything. Happy tweeting and good luck!

Posted in: twitter,twitter competitions