Writer’s Retreat

Holiday Cottages

UK

Creative/Outreach

Travel

1231

LinkScore Tooltip copy here
21

Linking domains
261

Competition entries

In 2019 we launched Writer's Retreat, a Twitter-based competition in collaboration with Pan Macmillan, one of the UK's biggest publishers. Our competition invited budding writers to tweet their novel ideas for a chance to win a week's holiday in their choice of one of three cosy cottages around Great Britain and expert feedback on their work.

Objectives

1. Achieve top-tier, authoritative, editorially valid links that increase site authority.
2. Increase organic search rankings to increase the client’s traffic.
3. Increase client's social media visibility.

Strategy

We knew we needed the collaboration of a respected book publishing company to get our competition off the ground, and Pan Macmillan joined the project early on to help us promote the competition on social media and secure a partnership with the bestselling author Elizabeth Macneal.

Our promotional website featured Macneal's tips for competition entrants and a shareable competition 'trailer' created by Verve Search designers.

To enter the competition, entrants needed to tweet a summary of their novel idea with the hashtag #WriTweet. The coveted prize was a week's stay at the winner's choice of one of three cottages suggested by our client Holiday Cottages, each located in an area that has previously inspired great writers, and expert feedback on their writing by author Elizabeth Macneal.

Elizabeth picked her favourite novel idea from the 261 entries submitted by the competition deadline. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic meant that the retreat couldn't go ahead – but the winner was awarded an equivalent Holiday Cottages voucher and extensive feedback on her work.