5 Things to Remember for a Contest on Social Media

If you’re planning on running a contest on social media, be sure to keep these best practices in mind.

There is no shortage of brands that have found great success from running a contest on social media. Contests are easy to design, simple to execute and are great ways of activating your social audiences (that can often find themselves dormant). When running a contest on social media, however, it is important to keep a few things in mind both from a superficial level (i.e. what people can see) and internally (i.e. what you need to remember as a business).

These five best practices will help you ensure that the next contest you decide to execute with the help of your social networks will be one to remember!

Cross-Platform Promotion is Key

People are never going to know about your contest unless you tell them about it. It sounds simple enough, but too often brands assume that simply launching a contest on social media means that their audience will flock to the sign up page. You’re going to need to go above and beyond in order to ensure that your contest – whatever it may be – is seen by audiences on every one of your social networks, when it’s appropriate, of course.

Your LinkedIn audience may not be as interested (or appreciative) in you promoting your contest as, say, your Facebook audience. Know the demographics of your network’s audiences and be sure that you share as much information about the contest with the right networks.

Take Advantage of Social Advertising

Just as with cross-platform promotion of your giveaway or contest on social media, advertising is going to be a crucial component to helping it pick up momentum. Again, people are not simply going to stumble upon the promotion you’ve worked so hard to develop. Creating a set of hypertargeted (if you’re not familiar with the term, learn more about it here) ads and running them on an ongoing basis will be hugely beneficial in driving signups that you want.

As a business, there is a reason why you’re making this offer, running this contest and giving something away. You have something to gain in the long run as a brand. That, in all likelihood, is going to come from a targeted demographic that you deem valuable as an audience. Take advantage of the targeting capabilities with social ads and get your target prospects signing up and giving you their information.

Enable Fangate and Collect Data

One of the nicest byproducts of a giveaway or a sweepstakes is that it can help you build your audience very quickly with some highly targeted audience members. In keeping with the theme of hypertargeting your social ads in order to promote your contest/giveaway with target demographics, you will want to be sure that Fangate is enabled in order to help build your social audience and stack it with audience members you hope to target with business-relevant messages in the future.

While, on the surface a contest might simply look like a brand being kind and generous, there are always business motives behind any decision. For your contest or promotion, be sure to require participants to ‘Like’ or follow your brand in order to participate. What’s more, you should be sure to collect as much data as possible. If people are interested in what you are giving away, they will likely be willing to share with you a whole lot of information. Think about what you want to collect (email addresses are a given) and include those fields in your signup form.

Protect Yourself with Detailed Terms & Conditions

If you think that simply adding an email address to a database without getting a user’s signoff is going to fly, you’ll have to think again. Without providing clearly laid out Terms & Conditions for your contest on social media, you’re going to open yourself up to a whole host of issues, including being labeled as a spammer.

Be sure to include a box that participants must check in order to participate that indicates that they have read and understand the terms of participation. In those terms, be sure to lay out what it is you intend to do with the information provided. People have a right to know and you, as a responsible brand, have an obligation to tell them.

Take Advantage of Rich Media

There’s no way to deny the fact that audiences of all types respond most to rich media (photos and videos). When promoting your campaign, take advantage of these kinds of media whenever possible. Be creative and think outside the box. There is so much content out there – and among that content, so many other brand including your competitors – that simply telling people about the opportunity to participate might be overlooked. Show them what it is being offered and encourage their participation with a unique message.

Conclusion

A contest, promotion, sweepstakes, or giveaway is a great way to attract attention to your brand, and it has never been easier than it is with the strategic use of social media. But in order to find that success, you’re going to have to put it the right mix of ingredients. Keeping these best practices in mind will go a long way with regards to finding success with your contest on social media.

Have you run any contests that leveraged social networks? Tell us about them in the comments below or on Twitter!