Tappsters, exciting news on our ReTweet Competitions!
We have had so much engagement with our first retweet of the summer that we decided to draw it early so that we can give a second prize to another lucky winner who shared a later tweet.
However, we got ourselves into a bit of a pickle. There are some competition intricacies we got mixed up in. And we figured we’d share them, because they are interesting and also because we like to be transparent.
Issue #1 – How do you pick a winner among 1,300 retweeters?
Co-Founder Laura Mc is a bit of an obsessive about competitions because her favourite TV show growing up was Watchdog, and she strongly remembers the Hoover Free Flights Giveaway Scandal.
She wanted to make sure that when Teacher Tapp drew the retweet winner everything was fair. But how? A simple way to do this is to use a piece of software freely run by the Competitions Agency . This takes all the retweets, selects a winner, and there’s a neat piece of code that you can embed so people can check the contest was run fairly.
Laura tested it and was happy with how it worked, so let the competition carry on. Hurray. What she didn’t realise, however, was that when she did what she thought was a test, she had actually drawn the winner. Because, obviously, the drawn can only be done once. If you can do it again then the draw isn’t actually that reliable. Duh. (She realises now that was daft).
So the tweet carried on for a few weeks until we decided to do an early draw. And then realised we’d actually already picked a winner back on the 9th. So, first up, we’ve decided to honour that winner!
Aaaaand, it was @MrAllington and the proof is here (use the check ID: iySMwrak).
Well done Mr Allington you have won a HUE HD Visualiser, a £50 John Catt Voucher, and two Cineworld tickets. We will be in touch via twitter to find out how to get these to you.
Issue #2: What happens if people retweeted after the draw was made?
Laura hadn’t realised that because she hadn’t deleted the tweet on the 9th then people would continue retweeting, thinking they were in the contest, but it was no longer possible to win because the tweetdraw had already taken place.
Looking at the numbers, around a further 20 people retweeted. Which isn’t a lot. But still.
So, we decided to run another raffle using everyone who had been in the first raffle and the extra people.
To do this we used a piece of software called Lucky Retweet, which doesn’t have any of the controls of the first software, so we could have just picked and picked and picked. And you can’t easily check online. But we didn’t redraw, and we took a screengrab so you can check!
The winner for this one was….
So @V_ARnold16 Congratulations! You too have won a HUE HD Pro Visualiser, two tickets and a £50 John Catt voucher!
Issue 3: What happens to the tweet now?
Sadly, it must go. So we have deleted it. But here it is for posterity.
Also: WE HAVE A NEW TWEET. AND THE RAFFLE FOR THIS ONLY HAS 10 MORE DAYS LEFT ON IT. AND ONLY 270 ENTRIES SO FAR (at time of posting)!
So get sharing. Don’t forget, Terms & Conditions apply. But mostly, VISUALISERS ARE THE PRIZE!