One of the best and easiest ways to drive engagement and build word of mouth traffic about your brand is to run a contest via social media. Not only it's an engaging and exciting way to get consumers, it's also inexpensive. And the data collected can give you feedback to improve your business.
Running a social media contest or competition can generate some quick fans and drive quality, qualified, interested traffic to your site. Without a good strategy in place, your hard-earned effort might well be going to waste.
Competitions and giveaways are effective at bolstering social stats, like the number of followers. The problem is that these followers turn out to be less likely to engage with the page again. However, there are exceptions to this rule. Social contests can be highly effective, if they are done correctly, and under the right circumstances.
Vote contest, photo contest, photo caption contest, essay contest, video contest, a user-generated content contest and sweepstakes are some examples of competition that can be run on the internet.
Social Media Plan
Competitions should only represent one part of your social media marketing plan. A plan basically involves: a clear goal, a calendar for your content, targets for your outcomes, and a swipe file of your content ideas and mind maps.
Clear Goal
As is the case with nearly any marketing effort, social media contests must have a clearly defined goal in order to generate any value at all. A social media promotion will generally achieve one or more of the following: sales, fans, email subscribers, PR/brand awareness.
Define what to achieve before running your competition, design your competition message and follow-up campaign based around your desired outcomes. Setting a clear goal also helps you keep track of your performance, and make sure your contest is performing to your expected targets.
Target
Having a defined target is just as important as your goal. It is effective to align a target audience to a specific goal and market the contest to them.
Most successful contests were the result of the specific nature of the targeting efforts. By knowing and understanding your target, you can have a successful targeting strategy that can tap into the rapidly growing market and gain many faithful consumers and clients.
After knowing your target, you should then know how to pick the right prize for the winner. In general, there are three types of prizes that companies offer in contests: third-party prizes, a product from the business running the contest, or intangibles.
Website
A popular contest will send good traffic to your website. Be sure to have your website online and up-to-date before you launch your competition.
- Make sure all links work.
- Have your opt in links visible and accessible.
- Ensure that the competition's branding is clear and visible.
- Make sure users can find and buy your product.
- Have your "About Us" and "Contact Us" pages are up to date and working.
Marketing
Unless you have an existing list of thousands of engaged fans, your contest is most likely going to need a bit of a push to get it going.
To get the most benefit out of your campaign, you should market across a number of platforms. Some strategies to consider are:
- Your existing email list.
- Your existing social media platforms.
- Your blog and website.
- Joint venture partner's lists.
- Radio or Television advertising.
- Print or paid web advertising.
Running the Contest
After careful planning and having a clear goal, and having your own website online with good marketing, you can then run your contest. If you can host your own contest, you must have at least an in-house programming team. If you don't, you can use a third party application to host your contest.
During the contest, you should:
- Give tips on how people can increase their chances of winning.
- Teach them how to share your content.
- Engage with them on social media and really get to know them.
- Publish valuable, relevant, and shareable content.
A competition with a coveted prize will encourage interactiona on the social media platform you run your competition on. Make sure you get in on the conversation, and actively chat and engage with your fan base.
After the social media competition, you should have a winner. Everyone loves a winner, so make sure you don't let your contest run on too long. A typical social contest runs about four weeks - longer if it's more complex. When the winner is chosen, do a PR push to publicize their win. Use social media to promote the winner.
After completing and announcing the winner, you can then do the following:
- Keep the conversation open, with post-competition specials, offers, and valuable content.
- Ensure you give them enough reason to stay on your list.
- Offer follow-up bonuses simply for having been a part of the contest.
Launching a contest wasn't just for fun, it was to achieve a specific marketing goal. After the contest is done, you need to measure the impact it had on brand engagement, traffic to your site, conversion, and sales.
Follow-up
The strategy of any marketing campaign is to do follow-ups. A well created contest will collect you new, qualified, engaged and interested subscribers.
The most valuable people in your contest are not actually the winners, they are the people who didn't win. Prepare your customer service, social media, and auto-responder campaign beforehand, encouraging your new fans to take further action in the competition.
Build a Community
After running a successful contest, your contest should have driven many people that are interested in your brand.Making use of the excitement surrounding your contest, you can begin to build your community. A community is a place where your fans don't only respond to your questions, articles, and updates, they also actively seek you out to engage you and they seek one another out to engage. With a community, each and every contestant can communicate with one another, creating a group where viral marketing can further expand your business.