Running contests on social media offers one of
the best strategies for getting audiences engaged, earning shares, and
generating impressions. Following a careful procedure can increase your
contest’s chances of success.
On the other hand, not having a plan and a
strategy can mean that even the most popular contests accomplish little in the
way of marketing goals, while taking resources from other campaigns. Or, worse,
the contest can turn into a giant mess that leaves a sore spot on your brand
image.
So, to make sure your contest has the best
odds of helping boost your social media marketing performance, use the
following 11 steps below. They’ll help you strategize for your contest, plan it
out, create a schedule, and follow through on everything in a way that leaves
both your participants and your fellow co-workers satisfied with the results.
1\. Decide on a Social Media Marketing Goal
Many contests start by thinking of a great
promotion, prize or theme. The goals get defined later.
While this approach feels natural because
thinking about prizes or contest themes is exciting, there’s danger in not
having a focus from the beginning. Your goals can easily get diluted or
intermingled in a way that makes them ineffective.
For instance, let’s say you are a scuba diving
certification company. You want people to enter into a contest to win some free
gear. If your ultimate goal is to get people to sign up for lessons, then the
format of your contest needs to be positioned toward people who have _never_
scuba dived before.
The problem is that only people with scuba
experience may share your contest since they are the only people who know how
valuable the gear you’re offering is. To fix the problem, the contest needs to
highlight from the beginning how winning your gear set makes it easier than
ever to start scuba diving. Without this perspective, you may instead end up
pitching the value of a feature-packed diving watch, which will read as “all
Greek” to people who aren’t familiar.
So, start from a defined goal and let the
structure of the contest expand organically from there.
Common goals include:
●Increasing overall purchases.
●Increasing brand awareness.
●Increasing conversion actions like
demo signups/free lesson signups/webinar registrations/content downloads.
●Capturing emails.
●Increasing site traffic.
●Earning more page likes/followers.
Make sure that no matter what, your contest
reinforces your goals. If, for example, you want to earn more traffic, make
visiting a landing page on your site mandatory for entry. The landing page
should also have a call to action suggesting people browse your content or your
products. Similarly, if your aim is to increase purchases, you can make a
purchase a necessary part of entry.
2\. Decide on Your Hosting and Promotional Venues
The venue you host your contest on can have
huge consequences for how your contest is structured and how it will play out
over time. Some platforms – i.e., Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram – have
strict rules regarding how contests are held and how they are conducted.
Eventually, you will need a legal team to
review your contest plan before you put it into action. The venues you use to
host and/or promote the campaign will affect their recommendations for what you
can and cannot do.
Note that “hosting” a contest refers to all of
the contest activities taking place on that platform. For instance, if you are
going to make the entry requirement sharing a post and the prize drawing comes
from those shares, the contest is occurring on that platform.
On the other hand, if you are going just to be
promoting the contest on social media and the actual entry and other activities
takes place on your own site, that creates a different set of conditions.
Realize that the more channels you have your
contest hosted on, the more complex your campaign will become. You can reduce
complexity by directing everyone to one point of entry, such as prompting
“Enter on Facebook” or “Visit Our Website to Enter!” This strategy makes
promoting your contest across multiple channels easier without having to add
data-gathering and community management headaches.
3\. Decide How People Will Enter Your Social Media Contest
A few entry requirement options you can
consider are to:
● **Submit email**
and other contact information.
● **Require a connecting action**
, such as “liking”
or “following” your page.
● **Require an engagement action**
, such as
“liking,” commenting, or sharing a particular post.
● **Ask people to cast their vote**
using polling
tools on Facebook or Twitter or on your own website.
● **Create and submit user generated content**
for
judgement, meaning the selected best entry gets the prize.
Direct submissions of emails typically take
the least amount of effort to track, especially if you use a custom form.
Requiring people to comment, like or share a post can be similarly easy,
although this engagement may not connect meaningfully with the desired goal or
conversion action.
Voting can be another easy entry mechanism,
but you may want to steer people to a custom form since many social platforms
register votes anonymously.
Creating user-generated content is an awesome
idea since it leads to the creation of marketing assets you can later use while
bringing higher levels of engagement to your campaign. However, you will need
to review the legal requirements of such a campaign and disclose details like
ownership rights and liability to anyone who submits.
Software tools are available to help you track
data such as new page “likes,” so you can differentiate new entrants from
people who already like your page. These tools include Strutta
, Shortstack
, Wishpond
,
and Rafflecopter
. Of these,
Rafflecopter has the best pricing and is singularly dedicated to contests.
4\. Create a Contest Theme and a Name
Your social media contest theme should have
its own set of branding devices in play. The more vivid your branding, the more
excited entrants will be. Well-branded and themed contests also have a way of
attracting more attention.
Remember that the clarity of the theme and also the
clarity of a contest title can make or break participation. Shorter names are
usually better, especially since space is limited on social posts for
Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms
5\. Settle on a Contest Timeline
Decide on a date you will make the final prize
announcement. Then, work backward from this date to plot out when
drawing/judging will start and end. Going further, decide when entry is closed,
when it is open, when promotion for the contest starts, and any other key dates
involved.
Build in the needed time to handle everything,
especially if snags or hurdles emerge. You need to give yourself time to plan
and design creative elements, get approval from legal, and accomplish other
milestones.
6\. Decide on Prizes or Giveaways
You may have already had a prize or giveaway
in mind, but you should wait to finalize this decision until you have all the
other above elements in place. Holding off prevents you from getting locked
into the prize aspect and losing focus on everything else. If you’ve seen the
Office episode where [Michael\\
Scott auctions off non-existent Bruce Springsteen tickets](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP9kNruuWGI "Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP9kNruuWGI")
,
you know what we mean.
As we suggested above, ensure the prize
directly ties into your goals, your desired customer path, and your business as
a whole. Offering a generically appealing prize like a free iPhone can earn you
thousands of entrants, but most of these entrants will not be viable customer
leads.
Instead, think of prizes that connect to your
business, your brand, and your most important values. Also, try to think of a
storytelling angle so that your prize winner can become a testimonial of sorts,
illustrating what makes your company great.
7\. Draft an Editorial and Social Content Calendar
Using the timeline you created, plan out ahead
of time exactly what types of social media posts and other promotional
collateral will be needed and when it will be published. You can always use
placeholder content or deviate from your calendar, but the last thing you want
to do is promote your contest off-the-cuff with no real approval or planning.
To help you decide what kind of content will
be needed when, think of your social media contest in six discrete phases:
1. Pre-launch.
2. Launch.
3. Last
chance for entries.
4. Closed
for entries.
5. Winner
announcements.
6. Post-contest
promotion and related campaigns.
8\. Develop Your Promotional Strategy
You want to amplify visibility for your
contest as much as possible, especially during the first few days of launch.
Having a “slow burn” strategy actually hurts your chances for entrants since
posts with little engagement tend to get buried. However, posts that get tons
of engagement the moment they are created tend to be discovered more readily by
late-comers.
Include paid ads, organic promotions, website
content, and social media content within your promotional strategy. You don’t
have to have a huge budget for any one particular thing, but generally the more
you can invest, the better your results will be.
9\. Have a Community Management and Crisis Plan in Place
Since it will be hosted online, your contest
will essentially run 24/7. You therefore need a plan for someone to monitor
activities during off-business hours.
Remember that contests tend to overwhelm
unprepared social media marketing teams since they create a flood of engagement
compared to the normal day-to-day. Be prepared for this in advance.
Also, have a backup plan in case things go
wrong. Hopefully, you will never have to implement your crisis management plan,
but having it prepared ensures you have a set damage containment strategy
rather than responding on-the-fly. Sometimes when we improvise while handling
stressful situations, we can make things worse, so have your backup plan
written down.
10\. Finalize Your Rules, and Have Legal Review Everything
The last thing you want is for your contest to
result in a lawsuit or bad PR. You should therefore have experienced legal
counsel verify that all your rules, prizes, and general procedures are
appropriate and legal.
Consider that if you run your contest nationally
or internationally, different states may have different rules regarding
contests and prizes. You want to be in compliance everywhere possible, which
may even mean restricting entry within certain geographical areas.
11\. Document Everything So You Can Learn in the Future
As an extra step, make sure you take notes on
as much of what you learn as you can. Also, gather data throughout the contest,
so you can trace ROI and whether you’ve met your goals. This documentation may
be extra work, but it will pay off by helping you learn lessons and improve
over time.
If you need help with social media marketing
or hosting a social media contest, you can always look to outside expertise.
Contact us today if you need assistance planning your contest, tying it to your
goals, or simply verifying that it has the best possible chance of bringing you
success.