11 Steps to a Successful SocialMedia Contest
11 Steps to a Successful Social Media Contest
Running contests on social media o ers one of the best strategies for getting audiencesengaged, earning shares, and generating impressions. Following a careful procedure canincrease your contest’s chances of success.
11 Steps to a Successful Social Media Contest
11 Steps to a Successful Social Media Contest
On the other hand, not having a plan and a strategy can mean that even the most popularcontests accomplish little in the way of marketing goals, while taking resources from othercampaigns. Or, worse, the contest can turn into a giant mess that leaves a sore spot on yourbrand image.
So, to make sure your contest has the best odds of helping boost your social mediamarketing performance, use the following 11 steps below. They’ll help you strategize foryour contest, plan it out, create a schedule, and follow through on everything in a way thatleaves both your participants and your fellow co-workers satisfied with the results.
1. Decide on a Social Media Marketing Goal
11 Steps to a Successful Social Media Contest
11 Steps to a Successful Social Media Contest
Many contests start by thinking of a great promotion, prize or theme. The goals getdefined later.
While this approach feels natural because thinking about prizes or contest themes isexciting, there’s danger in not having a focus from the beginning. Your goals can easily getdiluted or intermingled in a way that makes them ineffective.
For instance, let’s say you are a scuba diving certi cation company. You want people toenter into a contest to win some free gear. If your ultimate goal is to get people to sign upfor lessons, then the format of your contest needs to be positioned toward people who havenever scuba dived before.
The problem is that only people with scuba experience may share your contest since theyare the only people who know how valuable the gear you’re o ering is. To x theproblem, the contest needs to highlight from the beginning how winning your gear setmakes it easier than ever to start scuba diving. Without this perspective, you may insteadend 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 de ned goal and let the structure of the contest expand organically fromthere.
Common goals include:
Increasing overall purchases. Increasing brand awareness. Increasing conversion actions like demo signups/free lesson signups/webinarregistrations/content downloads. Capturing emails. Increasing site traffic. Earning more page likes/followers.
11 Steps to a Successful Social Media Contest
11 Steps to a Successful Social Media Contest
Make sure that no matter what, your contest reinforces your goals. If, for example, youwant to earn more tra c, 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 contentor your products. Similarly, if your aim is to increase purchases, you can make a purchase anecessary part of entry.
2. Decide on Your Hosting and Promotional VenuesThe venue you host your contest on can have huge consequences for how your contest isstructured 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 areconducted.
Eventually, you will need a legal team to review your contest plan before you put it intoaction. The venues you use to host and/or promote the campaign will a ect theirrecommendations for what you can and cannot do.
Note that “hosting” a contest refers to all of the contest activities taking place on thatplatform. For instance, if you are going to make the entry requirement sharing a post andthe 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 andthe actual entry and other activities takes place on your own site, that creates a di erent setof conditions.
Realize that the more channels you have your contest hosted on, the more complex yourcampaign will become. You can reduce complexity by directing everyone to one point ofentry, such as prompting “Enter on Facebook” or “Visit Our Website to Enter!” Thisstrategy makes promoting your contest across multiple channels easier without having toadd data-gathering and community management headaches.
11 Steps to a Successful Social Media Contest
11 Steps to a Successful Social Media Contest
3. Decide How People Will Enter Your Social MediaContestA 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 particularpost. Ask people to cast their vote using polling tools on Facebook or Twitter or on yourown website. Create and submit user generated content for judgement, meaning the selected bestentry gets the prize.
Direct submissions of emails typically take the least amount of e ort to track, especially ifyou use a custom form. Requiring people to comment, like or share a post can be similarlyeasy, although this engagement may not connect meaningfully with the desired goal orconversion action.
Voting can be another easy entry mechanism, but you may want to steer people to acustom form since many social platforms register votes anonymously.
Creating user-generated content is an awesome idea since it leads to the creation ofmarketing assets you can later use while bringing higher levels of engagement to yourcampaign. However, you will need to review the legal requirements of such a campaignand 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 candi erentiate new entrants from people who already like your page. These tools includeStrutta, Shortstack, Wishpond, and Rafflecopter. Of these, Rafflecopter has the best pricingand is singularly dedicated to contests.
11 Steps to a Successful Social Media Contest
11 Steps to a Successful Social Media Contest
4. Create a Contest Theme and a Name
Your social media contest theme should have its own set of branding devices in play. Themore vivid your branding, the more excited entrants will be. Well-branded and themedcontests 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 orbreak participation. Shorter names are usually better, especially since space is limited onsocial posts for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms.
11 Steps to a Successful Social Media Contest
11 Steps to a Successful Social Media Contest
5. Settle on a Contest TimelineDecide on a date you will make the nal prize announcement. Then, work backward fromthis date to plot out when drawing/judging will start and end. Going further, decide whenentry is closed, when it is open, when promotion for the contest starts, and any other keydates involved.
Build in the needed time to handle everything, especially if snags or hurdles emerge. Youneed to give yourself time to plan and design creative elements, get approval from legal,and accomplish other milestones.
6. Decide on Prizes or Giveaways
11 Steps to a Successful Social Media Contest
11 Steps to a Successful Social Media Contest
You may have already had a prize or giveaway in mind, but you should wait to nalize thisdecision until you have all the other above elements in place. Holding o prevents youfrom getting locked into the prize aspect and losing focus on everything else. If you’ve seenthe Office episode where Michael Scott auctions o non-existent Bruce Springsteen tickets,you know what we mean.
As we suggested above, ensure the prize directly ties into your goals, your desired customerpath, and your business as a whole. O ering a generically appealing prize like a free iPhonecan earn you thousands of entrants, but most of these entrants will not be viable customerleads.
Instead, think of prizes that connect to your business, your brand, and your mostimportant values. Also, try to think of a storytelling angle so that your prize winner canbecome a testimonial of sorts, illustrating what makes your company great.
7. Draft an Editorial and Social Content CalendarUsing the timeline you created, plan out ahead of time exactly what types of social mediaposts and other promotional collateral will be needed and when it will be published. Youcan always use placeholder content or deviate from your calendar, but the last thing youwant 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 mediacontest 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.
11 Steps to a Successful Social Media Contest
11 Steps to a Successful Social Media Contest
8. Develop Your Promotional StrategyYou want to amplify visibility for your contest as much as possible, especially during the
rst few days of launch. Having a “slow burn” strategy actually hurts your chances forentrants since posts with little engagement tend to get buried. However, posts that get tonsof 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 withinyour promotional strategy. You don’t have to have a huge budget for any one particularthing, but generally the more you can invest, the better your results will be.
9. Have a Community Management and Crisis Plan in Place
11 Steps to a Successful Social Media Contest
11 Steps to a Successful Social Media Contest
Since it will be hosted online, your contest will essentially run 24/7. You therefore need aplan for someone to monitor activities during off-business hours.
Remember that contests tend to overwhelm unprepared social media marketing teamssince they create a ood of engagement compared to the normal day-to-day. Be preparedfor this in advance.
Also, have a backup plan in case things go wrong. Hopefully, you will never have toimplement your crisis management plan, but having it prepared ensures you have a setdamage containment strategy rather than responding on-the- y. Sometimes when weimprovise while handling stressful situations, we can make things worse, so have yourbackup plan written down.
10. Finalize Your Rules, and Have Legal Review EverythingThe last thing you want is for your contest to result in a lawsuit or bad PR. You shouldtherefore have experienced legal counsel verify that all your rules, prizes, and generalprocedures are appropriate and legal.
Consider that if you run your contest nationally or internationally, di erent states mayhave di erent rules regarding contests and prizes. You want to be in complianceeverywhere possible, which may even mean restricting entry within certain geographicalareas.
11. Document Everything So You Can Learn in the FutureAs 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 yourgoals. This documentation may be extra work, but it will pay o by helping you learnlessons and improve over time.
If you need help with social media marketing or hosting a social media contest, you canalways look to outside expertise. Contact us today if you need assistance planning yourcontest, tying it to your goals, or simply verifying that it has the best possible chance ofbringing you success.
11 Steps to a Successful Social Media Contest
