9 Ways to Win at Social Media Contests

With consistent, informative and engaging communications on your part, social media can be an inexpensive, fast and easy way for your business messages to reach and increase your audience. If you’re already using social media, hosting a contest creates an opportunity to grow your business by engaging your followers and making stronger connections with them.

Here are 9 ways to get started with social media contests.

1. Do your homework

As with your other marketing efforts, the more you put into your social media contest, the more you’ll get out of it. The objective of your contest is lead generation, so quantify your goal; for example, adding 10 leads to your database or increasing your followers by 10 percent. Knowing your goal will make it easier to develop your tactics and messaging.

Identifying your primary audience will also help shape the tone of your contest. Whether you’re trying to generate listings or looking to expand your database with buyer leads, your communications will need to appeal to the audience. If you’re using a contest to build general brand awareness, your posts or tweets will align more with your general marketing messages rather than targeted ones.

Choose a theme for your contest and then create compelling subject lines, blog titles, messages and visuals that align with that theme.

Lead generation, more often than not, is a long-term endeavor — your target audience might not need your services right away — so offer a prize that builds awareness of your brand while still delighting participants.

Consider your budget, including the costs of promoting the contest, any third-party assistance you might need, the value of the prizes, the number of winners, and any fees for shipping or distributing the prizes.

Other logistics include setting down your contest’s rules and regulations in clear language that includes, for example, disclaimers for using the winner’s name and entry in your marketing, how often participants can enter and how entries will be judged. Rules for running social contests apply to you, too, so thoroughly familiarize yourself with what you can and can’t do on your platform of choice.

Before you even determine a prize, decide how the contest will be won. Choosing a winner can be as simple as drawing a random name from among the entrants, or you can ask a panel of judges to evaluate the entries. You can even have a contest where the audience votes for the winning entry.

Plan the timeline of your contest tasks and milestones, including when you will launch, send reminders, select and notify the winners, and send out the prize.

Make sure you choose an appropriate duration for your contest so that it meets your needs. If it’s too short, not enough people will hear about it and might miss their chance to enter. If it runs too long, your audience might lose interest and not return to read your posts or tweets.

2. Keep it simple

When you make it easy for people to enter — and share — your contest, you increase your chances of participation. At the same time, you want to attract qualified entrants, not people who enter every contest they encounter.

• “Like to win” contests, where entrants only have to click the Like button, tend to have low engagement and generate a minimal connection with participants.
• Contests that require user-generated content in order to win — such as creating and submitting a video or photo and then using a hashtag when they upload and share their content — attract people who are highly interested in you, but the added steps might be a barrier to participation. If you run a contest that asks for user-generated content, make sure you mention in your rules that by submitting their entry to the contest, participants are granting you permission to share it.
• An email-gated contest asks people to provide their email address to enter your contest. It’s an ideal way to build your database, but some entrants might be reluctant to give up their email for fear they’ll be inundated with messages. If you choose an email-gated contest, include an opt-in check box for recipients to grant you permission to send them ongoing emails.

3. Make it a fair trade

Most people will use the prize to determine whether or not they enter your contest; after all, if they’re going to compose a photo, shoot a video or, at the very least, fork over their email address to enter, you’d better make the prize worth your audience’s time and effort.

Some ideas are to partner with a local museum to host a private party for the winners and have a neighborhood restaurant cater it; build a gift basket with goodies from area shops; or offer a package that includes gift cards from a moving company, hardware store, and housekeeping and landscaping services.

4. Start off on the right foot

Since most people prefer to receive promotional offers through email, send your contest’s launch announcement and related communications that way, but direct your audience to the primary social media platform you will use to run the contest.

5. Keep it relevant

Your contest should be a subset of your regular content — not the only content you post or tweet on your social media platforms. Make sure your contest messages and prizes relate to your regular messaging. For example, if your prize is a home improvement gift basket, when you tweet or post about your contest you can also include a link to five weekend DIY projects.

6. Be personable

People want to know you’re human — that’s why you include other social media content such as tips and tricks, restaurant and book reviews, and local event information. Run your contest with that same personal touch. As long as you make your messages interesting, funny, personal and — most importantly — valuable to your target audience, you can spark a connection among contest entrants that leads to more business for you.

7. Cross-promote in two ways

If your prize fulfillment requires you to partner with someone else — such as services from local vendors — give your co-sponsors exposure through cross-promotions; they should do the same for you.

You should also cross-promote your contest by mentioning it on all your social media platforms to expand your reach and raise awareness of your brand among a potentially bigger audience.

8. Close out your contest and follow up

Select and announce your winner as soon as your contest closes. Post or tweet the name and winning entry (if you collected photos or videos as part of entering the contest) to all your social media platforms, and congratulate the winner. Be sure to write a press release announcing the contest winner, then post the release to your website and pitch it to the local media.

Email all your entrants to thank them for participating and submitting their content (if applicable), and tell them to keep following you for the next contest.

9. Measure and adapt

When your contest is over, take note of what worked and what didn’t work so that your next contest runs smoother, reaches an even bigger audience and generates more leads.

Your social media contest can be as simple or as complex as you want to make it, and you can use it to generate leads or raise awareness of your brand. As with your other marketing tools, a contest returns whatever you put into it. When you take the time and effort to prepare, monitor and measure it, a social media contest can be an effective tool to grow your business and differentiate you from the competition.