Social media contest…
It wonât be wrong if I say social media and online marketing are alternatives to each other. Many small businesses are thriving just because they are operating in an era thatâs full of social media platforms. They got lucky to have access to millions of potential consumers through social networking.
Accessing clients is not a big deal. Time and effort are required to attract clients and once you can develop that loyal customer, you create a brand ambassador who markets your product to new clients. The question is how you keep them all intact with the possibility of growing in numbers.
Read: How to start blogging?
Engagement keeps them connected. Every promotion has to have an engagement component. This is the only way to ensure clients get in touch with the company, product, or service. Out of many ways to engage clients, running a contest is one exciting activity to go with.
The contest is a type of competition that gets the participants to show their dominion over others in a particular field of interest. Contests are a fun and healthy way to engage. If they donât have an element of fun and surprise they will fail to attract clients.
Social media offer their own set of rules when it comes to user engagement. Contests being one of them, users need to be aware of particular policies when developing and executing contests on social media.
Here, we list a step by step guide to help you with formulating social media contests.
Social media contests are a great way to increase engagement and reach on your platforms.
Social media contests are a great way to increase engagement and reach on your platforms. By hosting a contest, you can encourage your followers to interact with your brand and share your content with their friends.
Contests are also a great way to generate new leads and grow your audience. By requiring participants to submit their contact information, you can quickly build up a list of potential customers.
Hosting a contest is easy and can be done with just a few minutes of planning. However, there are a few things you should keep in mind to make sure your contest is successful. First, choose a prize that will appeal to your target audience. Second, promote your contest across all of your social media channels and make it easy for people to enter. Third, select a winner based on merit, not random chance.
Guide to social media contest
Pre-Event
During this time, develop timelines, establish reasons and objectives as to why you want to run this particular contest, what will be the benefit and how will the business be helped. Think about various steps involved in producing and running the contest, assigning roles and responsibilities to the team members, and so forth.
Plan how and when you want to do this contest, choose the best social media outlet that suits your need. Design appealing graphics both for the contest and for the campaign to promote it before the event happens. Dry-run the campaign to see how it looks on social media.
Giveaways
Contents winners expect a prize or a reward at the end of the contest. There is no point in running a contest and leaving the competitors without recognition. Think about the giveaway as a souvenir and a memoir of the competition and your business. It has to be something related. I feel discount vouchers are yet another way to âtrapâ the user into spending money to buy something at a so-called discounted rate. Discount vouchers, unless they are adding value for the customers will do more harm than good.
The giveaway can be your products or can be something else. Plan intelligently and present the gift in a nice appealing way to make winners feel special.
Collaborate
For contests, you can always look into collaborating with other businesses to produce a joint venture. This can be either the whole campaign worked out together or you can only arrange for a giveaway together. Donât forget to give due credits to your partners.
Campaign and Engage
Once all the paraphernalia is ready, its time to start the actual work. Promote the contest before it starts to happen. Create appeal for your contest, add a surprise element for people to make them interested. Try not to mix any other promotion with the contest.
As the contest begins, set out clear rules and directions for the users to follow. Keep an eye on naughty users and stop any derailing or misleading comments and immediately delete them.
Engage with the audience during the campaign. This engagement should be directed to the target group to motivate and engage them in the contest.
Use Technology
Strive for a neutral contest that produces unbiased results. The use of technology can resolve this issue. Social media provides users with services to pick a winner and conduct random draws. Some apps and sites let you draw results of your contests by logging on and creating an account and allowing you to link your post to the service. You can also get help from buying social followers about it. It then automatically picks the relevant comments, users, and identifies winners. These statistics can also help to map the overall trends of the contest.
Retweetpick, Iconosquare, Woobox Dashboard are a few of the tools that help you deal with the analytics of a contest.
Post-Event
Collect data to analyze and evaluate your social media contest. Keep track of feedback, likes, and dislikes to see if the audience liked the contest or otherwise. General feedback can also help in evaluating the campaign.
The analysis would help in identifying what worked and what did not work. If the activity was able to generate the required outcome.
To read more, some quick links for on social media contest rules:
- Instagram contest rules
- Facebook contest rules
- Twitter contest rules
- Pinterest contest rules
Conclusion
As social media usage continues to grow, so do the opportunities for businesses to hold successful contests. By 2023, running a social media contest will be an essential part of any marketing strategy.
Here are a few tips on how to run a successful social media contest:
1. Plan ahead and set a budget. Decide what you want to achieve with your contest and how much you’re willing to spend.
2. Choose the right platform. Make sure you select a platform that is popular with your target audience.
3. Keep it simple. Don’t make your contest too complicated or difficult to enter.
4. Offer an attractive prize. Your prize should be something that will appeal to your target audience and motivate them to enter your contest.
5. Promote your contest effectively.
