How to Run a Social Media Contest
One of the most effective ways of generating a buzz around your business or brand is via social media. If you’re on the hunt for more likes or followers, one of the best ways of achieving this goal is by running a competition on social media. However, you cannot do this without coming up with a strategy that works. Otherwise, you will not be making the most of this great opportunity. So, here are a few of the ways of running a great social media contest.
Clearly Establish Your Goals
Not every single competition is run with exactly the same set of goals. So, you need to work out precisely what you are trying to achieve. For example, you may be looking to raise brand awareness, increase your social media following, encourage community engagement, or understand your customers better. Perhaps you would like to achieve all of the above. However, it is better that you prioritize what you want to achieve. This way, you are more likely to achieve your goals.
Photo/Tero
Choose Your Prizes
Once you have your goals clearly established, the next area that you need to think about is your prizes. After all, these are what are going to entice people to enter in the first place, so they need to be both attractive and realistic. Of course, you could offer a fantastic prize, but it needs to be realistic from a financial point of view as well. After all, you are going to need to cover the costs. A few potential options for prizes include your own products or services, a gift card, a unique experience, or another product that is directly related to your business.
Pick Your Entry Structure
How is it that you want people to enter your competition? This is also going to have a big impact on how it is run. There are several different options that you have in front of you such as photo or video contests, caption competitions, vote to win, answering a question, or simply liking and sharing a post. On social media, it also involves tagging in new friends. This is largely down to the fact that you want to get your name out there as widely as you possibly can.
Determine Deadlines for Your Contest
You are then going to need to set some deadlines for your contest. After all, you cannot have it running on forever. You will then need to set several reminders to ensure that you get as many entries as possible. However, if you make the deadline too short, you are not going to be able to do this. Too long and people may lose interest and even forget that they have entered the competition at all. Then, you should think about how often you are going to run these. For some, it is a matter of running one or two of these per year. For others, they want them to keep on going more or less continuously.
Establish Your Contest Rules
If you are running a simple contest, it is less likely that you need to establish a complex set of rules and regulations. However, if it is something that involves creativity or answering a question, you are more likely to need to set up your own rules clearly to ensure that there are no disputes along the way. You also need to understand the rules of the social media platform that you end up using. Otherwise, you could end up breaking some regulations that could negatively impact the status of your account as a whole.
Promote and Choose Your Winner
You will then need to go through the process of promoting your competition to as wide an audience as possible. Keep your copy as short and succinct as possible and choose some appropriate imagery to go alongside it. You can then go through the process of picking a winner. You should use a randomizer to do this as it will make it as fair as possible.
Analyze and Make Improvements
Based on how well or badly your competition has gone, you can then start to analyze what you can do in the future. You are always going to want to get more entries if you can. Also, you can gauge what sort of response your prize received and whether you need to make a change in the future.
Hopefully, these tips can help you to run better social media contests for your business.
Author: Carol Trehearn
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