Once in a while an idea crosses our desks that’s both fun and free and we can’t wait to share it with readers. We’re happy to report that Competwition.com is a really fun website that lets you quickly set up your own prize giveaways and have lots of potential readers brag on your book through Twitter.

All you need in order to set up your own competwition is a prize (i.e. an autographed copy of your book) and a Twitter account, and all Joe Public needs in order to enter is a Twitter account.

Competwition can help you rapidly build your social media following with more Twitter followers, enhance your online profile with viral news of your giveaway, and organically boost your SEO ranking with the social noise generated, all free of charge.

And it really couldn’t be easier – go and create your own competwition at http://competwition.com/create It takes a matter of minutes and the site will walk you through every step of the way. In a nutshell:

• You create your own competwition on the homepage in a matter of minutes;
• You then promote your new competwition through Twitter, Facebook, and however else you see fit – it’ll also be advertised on competwition.com.
• People can then immediately enter your competwition using their Twitter login.
• Those who enter automatically follow you and automatically tweet out your competwition prize details and a link to their followers, who will also then see and be able to enter your competwition, and so on…
• When your competwition ends, they’ll email you to let you know, and you can then login to competwition.com and randomly generate a winner.
• If, however, you’d like to reject that randomly-selected person for any reason (perhaps they’re a member of staff or they’ve somehow violated your terms), then you may do so at your own discretion, and another winner will be randomly generated.
• You then contact your lucky winner via Twitter to let them know about the excellent booty they’ve just won!

We tested the site to see how easy it actually was and the only spot at which we got “stuck” in setting up our free competwition was in the “Tweet Out” section. We emailed the good folks a Competwition.com to clarify and were pleased to get a fast and personal response:

• The tweet out is the tweet that automatically goes out when winners enter your competwition so the tweet is to promote your competwition in 110 characters. Here is an example tweet: #win a FREE signed copy of My Best Book by Jane Smith. Enter:

The UK based company boasts over 71,000 followers already with a majority being from the U.S. The site features competitions from around the world with many gaining over 2,000 Twitter followers with a single competition.

Of course while you’re there you can enter a few competwitions that interest you too, from among topics that include travel, sports, technology, entertainment and more… We confess – we had to enter a few ourselves.

Give it a try and let us know by commenting below when you set up a competwition and we’ll make sure to tweet it to our tribe, too!