Social media contests are an excellent way to get more followers since they raise brand awareness, boost engagement, and encourage people to learn about your company. Social media contests can get you REAL followers, and lots of them!
Finding your Target Audience
While contests can attract a broad audience, defining your target audience is important. Attracting more leads is not worthwhile if they have no interest in your brand. Think about your followers or audience and find a suitable prize for them. Try to choose a prize relevant to your brand to make it easier to transform participants into potential customers or followers. If the giveaway does not match your brand, participants may only be interested in the freebie and not engage with your business afterward. Here are some ideas to get you started:
- Offer a free new product or service
- Create a bundle of products related to your brand
- Gift cards for your business
Setting Goals And Choose a Platform
Before creating your contest, take time to understand what social media is relevant to the type of goal you have. For example, if you’re looking to increase engagement, Instagram would be a good choice. However, if you’re looking to drive traffic to your website, Facebook would be a better option.
Pro tip: Make SMART goals for your contest (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timebound). For example, I hope to gain 1,000 website visits within one week of running a Facebook contest.
Defining the rules
To avoid confusion, you need to define the rules for the contest. How are you going to have people enter the contest? Popular contest entry methods are liking the post, sharing the post, tagging someone in the comments, or submitting a photo/video. If you don’t have a large following, I recommend starting with an easy entry option, such as tagging someone in the comments. This will create followers and engagement since people won’t have to work to submit something. Users must engage with the contest post (and brand) as much as possible to increase their chances of winning. This campaign is ideal for companies looking to boost their social media presence!
Pick the winner
Once the contest is over, it is time to pick the winners! There are a few ways that you can pick winners fairly. If you are running a contest with no answer, but just entries, we suggest using an online tool like Wheel of Names to pick a winner at random. If you have a contest that needs a specific answer to win, choose the person who has the correct answer! Finally, if there are multiple with the correct answer, enter them into the Wheel of Names.
After your contest ends, track your results and see what worked and what didn’t. Then use these findings to optimize future contests for success. Remember, a successful contest starts with a goal.
Determining that goal can be challenging, which is why an annual marketing strategy is beneficial. Although running your business is what you do best, let us help you create successful contests as part of your marketing strategy!
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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.