Must-Have Components of a Social Media Contest

You want to run a social media contest, but wait – you’re missing a few key components of a social media contest that make them so great! Your goal is to run a contest that will attract and retain new customers and get more followers. Probably one of the biggest keys to success in building a social media contest is having a creative campaign to that will engage your audience. As a marketer, the best thing that you can do is study other people’s campaigns and see what they have done to be successful. This will aid you in determining what is successful and what is not.

We here at Raven5 have compiled a couple of key tips and guidelines that every marketer should follow to boost their following and create a great campaign.

• Hashtags

These are practically a must when building a contest through social. Using hashtags are an easy way for people to find and enter your contest because it is extremely simple and it is a consistent link back to your company. Some of the most successful contests have been linked solely to a hashtag

• Share More

Be strategic when making your contests. Giving your entrants incentive to share your contest will help your contest gain more attention and reach a broader audience. Having a participant’s entry seen by the eyes of their followers is a very powerful thing.  For example, you can have participants post a photo on their timeline and use a hashtag that will allow them to enter your contest, this allows for easy exposure and keeps you from worrying about whether or not your contest is being shared.

• Make Entering Easy

Entering a contest should be a fairly easy thing to do, but some businesses make entering so tedious and time-consuming that they lose half of their audience at the entry form. These days, attention spans are running at an all-time low. The best thing to do is to use a standard and simple opt-in form: First name, Last name, city, province and email. This will allow you to expand your email database and build a compliant email list at the same time.

• Get Personal

In case you haven’t noticed, this is the age of sharing and people are willing to share a lot because they love to share. Building a contest that is focused on them is a great way to build a good engagement.

Here are a few examples:

• Urban Hilton Weiner

This company gave $10 coupons to customers who tweeted their selfies with the hashtag #urbanselfie and incentivized participation with the possibility of winning more coupons. They even had grand prizes, which included a trip to New York, London, and Tokyo.

• Chipotle

This fast food chain asked for photo submissions of people wrapping their favourite objects in gold foil as part of their “Wrap what you love” campaign. The winner of this contest wrapped his four-day-old baby, and he won $10,000!

Conclusion

In order to make a great social contest you need to make it searchable, easy and fun and leave the rest up to your participants, they will be sure to make your contest interesting.

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