How to Create a Social Media Contest that Will Work
We can’t think of anyone who doesn’t love to win, can you? One of our favorite ways to help our clients reach their target audience and expand exposure is to build a contest set in the digital world of social media. Social media contests are a great way to get your brand, products or services out there.
Social media contests can range from big or small. Larger contests tend to have more expensive prizes that generate more interest to enter while requiring multiple steps for entries. Smaller contests are “smaller” in terms of prizes and simpler in terms of set up and entry checklists. Whether your company is looking to run a simple giveaway or a full-blown multi-step campaign, we’re here to help you launch a successful contest on social media with these helpful tips.
1. Set an objective and budget
The first few questions to ask before getting to the bells and whistles of planning a contest are what you want to achieve, how to achieve it and how will you evaluate your results. For example, some brands might be looking to increase their followers while some might be looking to expand their email list. If you’re stuck, here are some objectives to consider:
Increase brand, product or service awareness
Increase social media followers
Expand email list
Increase engagements on social media
Increase user-generated content
In most cases, you may have more than one objective you wish to achieve. That’s totally fine too! Just make sure you prioritize the ones that are most important to your business. After you set your goals, it’s time to set a budget. Deciding on a reasonable budget that will help you check off all the boxes can be difficult. Remember to consider the cost of things like prizes, advertising and other services you’ll need to utilize in order to promote your contest. Spending too little on a prize might not enticing enough to encourage people to enter your contest. On the other hand, depleting your budget on a good prize might not be useful if you’re out of advertising dollars to promote your contest at the end of the day.
2. Choose your prize
You’ve decided on a budget, yay! Now here’s the fun part. It’s time to pick the prize! You might choose to have one grand prize and a few smaller runner-up prizes or you might opt for one grand prize for one lucky winner. The choice is up to you and can depend on the type of your company. Here are some general prize ideas we came up with that will work for most companies.
A product or service your company offers
A vacation or experience
Gift cards or cash prizes
Tangible items that most people can use like electronics
A product from another brand your partner with
3. Pick your social networks
When running a contest, it’s important to plan accordingly so that you can collect all of the entries and don’t accidentally miss any. Deciding on the social media platforms you’re running the contest on is a great first step and possibly the most important. You definitely don’t have to stick to just one. In fact, we recommend picking multiple like Instagram and Facebook so that you can gain the most from the entries. If one of the entry requirements is user-generated content related, make things easier on yourself by using a specific hashtag that will make it easy for you to find entries.
4. Plan your contest entry structure
With your social networks in place, you can now determine what people need to do to enter your contest. Contest entry requirements can be as simple as sharing, commenting and liking a post to be entered. You can also allow people to secure multiple entries by not limiting the amount of times they can enter. When deciding on the structure of your contest, here are some questions to ask yourself:
What does someone have to do to enter the contest?
Can someone have multiple entries?
How long do you want to run the contest?
TIP: Larger and more valuable prizes should dictate a longer contest length as these are the prizes that are most enticing to people.
Here are our top structure tips when creating your contest:
Re-share a post on their own social media profile
Like, share and comment on an existing post on your company’s page
TIP: Ask them to tag other people (like their friends) for additional entries to increase your contest exposure to multiple users
Fill out a form on your website
User-generated content - post their own photo or video.
This can be a photo or video of them using your product, service or anything you want! Just be sure you are clear on what type of use-generated content is required to be entered.
Once you’ve come up with a concrete structure for your contest, make sure you’ve hit on all your blind spots by reading up on contest rules. The last thing you want is to get flagged by the social networks you’re running the contest on so read up on the legal fine print before they find a reason to shut your contest down! Read up on these contest results for Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to familiar yourself with their legal scope.
5. Promote, promote, promote!
You’ve done all the hard work to set up your contest, but the work doesn’t stop here. While you’re waiting for the entries to flood in, find ways to promote your contest and engage your audience so that they’re excited to enter (and possibly win). Remember, every entry can lead to a potential client or customer!
Here are our favorite ways to promote our social media contests:
If your budget allows for it, pump some advertising dollars into it! Boost or promote your contest post to get the word out.
Schedule follow up posts that remind people to enter.
TIP: In addition to this, you can also tease the contest by dropping hints in the days or weeks leading up to the contest.
Partner with influencers or other brands to get more exposure. Ask them to promote the contest to their followers.
In Closing
Social media contests are a fun and exciting way to promote your brand and engage with your audience and those outside your audience! After your contest ends and the winner is announced, remember to analyze how your contest did, reflect on what worked and what didn’t work and plan accordingly for the next time. Looking to run a social media contest of your own? Trifecta Marketing Services is here to help! Contact us for more information or visit our website for more details.