Monthly Archives: November 2022

Are Social Media Contests Right for Your Business?

A social media contest can increase excitement around your brand and offer an exciting opportunity for the participants to win something! Additionally, you are growing word-of-mouth advertising by inviting engagement and interaction on your page. So, is running a contest on social media right for your business? Yes, it most likely is!

The most critical step to launching a social contest is outlining your end goal. With every business and marketing decision you make, it’s important to be able to evaluate its success. To assess a contest’s success when it is over, you need to have a specific and measurable goal already defined. Common goals could include increased engagement, followers, leads, or brand awareness.

Keep Your Social Media Contest On-Brand

For a social media contest to be successful, it has to excite participants and logically connect to your brand.

Tie your contest in with your brand by both the type of contest you choose to run and the prize you offer. For example, you work at a car dealership and want to run a social media contest. Your goal might be to increase follower engagement. Try running a contest asking followers to comment with their top must-haves when purchasing a new vehicle. Using a simple question like this that talks about your product is a win-win gaining you more engagement and pushing your followers to think about making a purchase. 

Now the prize! Your prize should align with your brand and business, in this case, cars. Brainstorm different on-brand prizes that interest your audience in entering. If we are asking about a must-have in a car, maybe your prize is a gift card for accessories sold in your dealership. 

Tips for Running a Successful Social Media Contest

Now that you’ve laid the groundwork for your contest by deciding your goal and prize, it’s time to implement it! Here are some tips on how to create a successful social contest campaign.

Share Share Share!

Write your contest post with all the information necessary for followers to participate. Then share and keep your contest top of mind! You can do this by:

  • Pin your post to the top of your Facebook page so any new followers coming to your page can easily enter.
  • Share your post to your Facebook stories or on other social platforms.
  • Write another post remaining followers to enter before the contest ends!

Continue the Conversation

Your followers are engaging with your page, engage with them back! If you’re asking followers to comment on their favorite product from your business, comment back on their entry about why you think that is an awesome product too. Or something as simple as liking each entry or saying thank you to your followers for entering is a great way to continue that engagement. 

Stay Timely

Be sure to keep it timely and easy for participants to enter. If you have them “like this,” “comment this,” and then “submit this,” they will talk themselves out of putting in the effort for the prize. A good timeline to follow is 10-15 days for a contest entry period. If you do it longer, it could get lost in the algorithms, and people will forget about it. Causing a headache trying to get ahold of the prize winner.

Don’t Over Do It!

As much as you want to continuously increase your engagement and following, running a contest every other week can decrease the excitement and success of your posts. The hype won’t be there if people constantly see a contest running. As a result, most people will lose interest, and you won’t see an increase in your end goal. 

 

Ready to launch your first Facebook contest? We’d love to help you create your goal, think through the fine details, and implement your contest for success!

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Marisa Lyon
Marisa is the Finance and Marketing Manager at Innereactive, and we are so grateful to have her. She enjoys helping businesses find the right solution for their marketing needs.

Domain-Based Emails | Building Trust and Credibility

As a new business owner, did you start sending emails from a personal email account? Maybe you always had plans to get a more credible email address, but it got lost in the shuffle. If you’re still sending from your Gmail or Hotmail account, you may think, “what’s the big deal?” Our answer is trust and credibility! The email you’re sending plays a major effect in the appearance of your business.

Domain-Based Emails Build Credibility

If we asked for your initial impression of the following three emails, which one would you say was most credible or trustworthy?

  • MirandaLovesPandas@gmail.com
  • MirandaVeterinarian@gmail.com
  • Miranda@westlakeveterinarian.com

We chose Miranda@westlakeveterinarian.com as the email that seemed most credible… did you? Compared to the other two email addresses, this email sends a clear message of an established and professional business. We naturally view this person as invested in their business’s growth and success.

Help Increase Marketing Results

You’re growing your brand recognition every time you email or pass out a business card with your professional email address. Sending emails with domain-based emails increases its legitimacy in the eyes of the consumer and the email providers. It can also reduce the likelihood of your sales emails being marked as junk or blocked as spam as compared to a free email address.

An Affordable Investment

Most domain-based email providers offer email accounts for a few dollars per month for each email. Don’t look at this as an unnecessary expense but as an investment in your business. Many providers offer credible domain-based emails, and you can often get them through the company hosting your domain name. Robust providers, such as Google Workspace, offer an abundance of additional benefits within their domain-based email packages.

If you’re ready to get domain-based emails set up for your business, we recommend doing it as soon as possible! This avoids needing to complete a huge undertaking of migrating the emails. As part of your marketing team, we can help set up your domain-based email and have you hitting send in no time.

Heather Morrison
Heather is the VP of Operations at Innereactive and we are lucky to have her. She has over five years of experience running an HR department and enjoys helping businesses like yours find solutions to their HR needs.