Back in the day (you know, 5 years ago) contests were bread and butter for ski resorts.

Find something large or small to sweepstakes-ify with your social follwers and, bingo, you’d have an quick surge of fresh blood in your audience.

But that was then, what about now? What about stuff like this?

CHECK OUT IG or FB for details on how to win this FINE TECH NINE BOARD! #retweettoenter pic.twitter.com/OCUgn7SS5O

— Brian Head Resort (@brianheadresort) January 31, 2017

That was my question and it didn’t take me long to find an answer.

Let’s take a look at what I saw once I dug a bit deeper. First, this chart.

Now, going back to that tweet we’ll notice that the date is none other than January 31, 2017. Which corresponds to a nice little spike in growth on the same day.

“But wait,” you say, “that spike isn’t nearly as large as the one that starts on January 13!”

Hmm, what could have driven that spike? Maybe…this?

Follow us and retweet this to enter to win this Rossingnol Snowboard! The winner will be announced next Friday! #contest #followus pic.twitter.com/LTyXcEKw6H

— Brian Head Resort (@brianheadresort) January 13, 2017

Two contests, two spikes in growth. Now let’s quantify those.

Round 1: Jan 13 – 20
The first giveaway was announced on the 13th and ended on the 20th. Let’s compare that to the week before (5th-12th) for a benchmark.

• Jan 5-12: 23 new fans (0.65% growth)
• Jan 13-20: 348 new fans (9.73% growth)

Not too shabby.

Round 2: Jan 31 – Feb 7
The second giveaway was announced on the 31st and is still going (I’m writing this on Feb 5), so we’ll compare that stretch to the 5 days before (25th-30th).

• Jan 25-30: 27 new fans (0.65% growth)
• Jan 31-Feb 5: 174 new fans (4.41% growth)

Not too shabby either.

Yes
So do contests still work? Absolutely.

Brian Head might have started with a slightly below-average Twitter account in terms of size, so that certainly could have helped boost their numbers.

But with a solid reward (a snowboard) and a simple share-to-enter viral mechanism (retweet), it’s (still) an easy way to increase the size of your audience.

About Gregg & SlopeFillers
I've had more first-time visitors lately, so adding a quick "about" section. I started SlopeFillers in 2010 with the simple goal of sharing great resort marketing strategies. Today I run marketing for resort ecommerce and CRM provider Inntopia, my home mountain is the lovely Nordic Valley, and my favorite marketing campaign remains the Ski Utah TV show that sold me on skiing as a kid in the 90s.