Tips for Creating Successful Social Media Contests
Clients • 8th Jul, 15
Social Media has always been the tool to utilize when considering bolstering ones company and site, and the use of it for SEO is an equally essential key strategy. When considering how best to make use of your company or site’s social media account, considering running a social media contest might just be the best method of getting your site some immediate attention and generate some general traffic and essential feedback. Here are some basic, yet key tips and tricks of how to launch a successful Social Media Contest:
SET OUT CLEAR AND REALISTIC GOALS
Contests should be created with the specific purpose of achieving a very realistic marketing goal – that would be the function of the contest in the first place. Is creating awareness the key factor or the launching of a new product of service? Grouping a target customer through detailed market research is an effective way of better focusing and collecting the necessary resources to affectively launch your contest to the correct groups directly- it also benefits in knowing which social media to utilize in the process.
BE AS CREATIVE AS POSSIBLE
There really are no limitations as to how far you can go, and how creative you can be once you’ve isolated the customer group you are most likely to appeal to. Competitions can be small or large and go through rigorous judging, the ball’s in your court, as long as your team ensures that the prizes are appetizing enough. A few ideas on contests would be:
- User-generated content that awards best personal experience stories.
- Photo-contests which relates to the product or service (eg. Best fitness transformations for health insurance, or best daredevil stunt pictured to win an exciting holiday getaway).
- Product invention contest to win large cash prizes.
- Video contests which allow contestants to use product and company information to create an advertisement for a specific product or service.
An example of the LottoStar.co.za online competition:
USE EVERY SOCIAL MEDIA AVENUE AVAILABLE
The next step, once your contest is set-up and ready to go live, is making it go viral. Participation should be attracted from all avenues of social media available and linked to all social marketing bases. It should be promoted via Twitter, Facebook and even the company’s blog. Traditional avenues of marketing channels such as emails, print media, signage and posters should not be overlooked where applicable. If the product, reward or prize is enticing enough – the contest will spread itself as people are always keen to enter and share exciting competitions with friends and family. An important key factor would therefore also be how easy your contest is to share and embed across various platforms from Youtube (a video advertisement, perhaps) to Facebook, to Twitter … and beyond.
Rio SEO (previously Meteor Solutions) is a social media tracking tool. Use resources such as these to track the success and reach of your contest and its impact on the web.
IMPORTANT - Using a Bit.ly URL curtailer for link location online ensures that easy “copy/paste” sharing options are available. Further public interaction is also encouraged by allowing the public to be the judges of the competition and vote for their favorite and potential winners online.
ASSESS THE LONGEVITY OF THE COMPETITION
Do not let a contest run for too long, keep everything exciting and fun and be sure that a clear winner is chosen and celebrated online. Tracking their winning story is a good way to further get the public involved in your product or services. A good length of time for a contest would be four weeks; the length of time highly depends on the complexity and ‘size’ of the competition (global, national, etc.). So a PR rush once the winner is chosen is really critical to ensure the most integral part of the contest is delivered. Promote the winner like crazy across all the platforms used throughout the competition as well as taking as many pictures as possible. Here’s where your media tracking software really comes in handy: go back and assess which people and social sites were or are talking about the winner the most. Next; comment on these networks so as to create even more interest in the winner and largely then, the company as well.
MEASURE THE SUCCESS OF YOUR CONTEST
Once all the necessary coverage on the winner has been completed and all media channels have been updated with relevant information, a careful assessment can be made to see whether the contest was a success or failure and whether or not it generated traffic, awareness and most importantly achieved the marketing goal. Measuring the contest is then a matter of tracking its impact on brand engagement, site click-through, conversion and even bottom-line sales. If all figures are significantly up – then an obvious success rate can be assumed, but that doesn’t exempt the company or site from the odious task of meticulously checking up. The tracking tool should be consulted and all success metrics measured to ascertain whether the newfound traffic has resulted in successful conversion.
Whatever the outcome, a respectful competition (best bikini body may not be the best choice when trying to launch a professional, corporate or family orientated brand) may always go a long way in creating, at the very least, an awareness of your brand or product, which is essentially the aim, especially when following up and inducing measurable and favorable impact on the traffic delivery to our specific site. Following up is therefore the most crucial step, but something has to be said about having fun while doing so.