A social media contest is a tried and true method for marketers to increase brand engagement. Think about it this way: contests take advantage of people’s innate desire to win and combine it with an enticing offer (or even just the chance to be featured prominently from your brand), resulting in an already engaged audience that is even more so.
Effective Marketing Through Social Media
To put it simply, social media is now an essential part of living in the modern digital world. The vast majority of us are active on at least one social networking site.
If you use social media as a marketing tool, you can reach a massive audience that could turn into paying customers. The challenge is communicating with them. A healthy competition can help in this regard.
We live in an era where social media makes interaction incredibly simple. Your chances of having your contest go viral are greatly increased by the accessibility of sharing content on these sites.
The benefits of holding a social media contest are many
The time has come for the most important question: To what extent do social media contests help promote brands? Is it worth it to spend (sometimes exorbitant) amounts of money to increase brand awareness and audience participation? Consider Breck’s, a gardening company that has found success in using social media contests to build brand awareness and drive purchases. Breck’s regularly hosts UGC contests in which customers are encouraged to upload photos of their flourishing gardens, made possible by the seeds they purchased from the company’s website.
Promotional contests on social media can have positive effects on a company’s image in several ways.
- There is more participation, which is a good thing.
- Increased exposure
- Acquiring more subscribers
- Added information about the target audience
- Now that you know the benefits of running social media contests, we’ll go over the steps you need to take to get started. Whatever social media site you decide to use for your contest, here are some best practises to follow:
Create Specific Objectives
If you’re holding this competition on social media, you can aim for:
- Boost product recognition
- Produce sales leads.
- Boost Participation in the Community
- Expand the scope of the brand’s recognition.
- Drive website traffic
There’s nothing stopping you from aiming for multiple targets. Once you know what you’re shooting for, you can set some concrete goals. Your targets should be SMART (i.e., specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound). It helps to have very specific goals in mind. Your key performance indicators, or the metrics that will tell you if you’re on track to meet your goals, will be based on what it is you hope to accomplish.
2.Pick a Social Media Site to Use
It’s time to choose a social media outlet now. You should base your decision on which social media platform your target audience is most active on.
Let’s say you want to promote your company’s name among the younger generations. Instagram is probably your best bet here.
The question is how to find out which social networks your intended audience uses. With the help of social listening, you can find the best social media channel to reach your customers by keeping tabs on brand mentions and hashtags related to your industry, in addition to monitoring your engagement rates and reach on each platform.
3. Choose a Free Gift
Determining what to offer as prizes in a social media contest is crucial. The prizes should be substantial enough to motivate participants without being so costly that the competition loses money (ROI). It’s important that the prize has some bearing on what you’re selling. Keep in mind that you must appeal to a specific group of people. A pet store that offers an iPad as a prize may attract people who are more interested in iPads than in the pets they sell. Offering discounts or free samples is a good alternative to providing a prize if you’re a smaller brand or don’t have the funds for a prize.
4. Set the Guidelines for the Competition
What you’re trying to accomplish with your campaign should inform the parameters of your contest. If you’re trying to increase your brand’s social media following, you could offer participants extra entries into the giveaway if they follow your account. Asking customers to write about their experience with your product is a great way to increase community engagement and brand reach because it makes fans feel heard and connected to the brand, and it gives you valuable user-generated content.
Fifth, publicise your social media contest
Obviously, the best place to publicise your social media contest is on the platform where it will actually be held. What you write needs to be attention-grabbing. Make use of trending hashtags to get your content seen, and create your own to keep track of submissions.
You can even try to find communities that let you advertise social media competitions. Facebook.
6. Keep an eye on the results and reveal the winner (s)
Check in on participation as soon as your contest goes live. You can put the information you glean from tracking your contest towards promoting it.
People who visited your contest’s landing page, for instance, could be retargeted. Alternatively, you could launch a paid advertising campaign based on your research into the demographics of your clientele.
Seventh, Analyze User-Generated Content and Its Impact
Once you’ve announced the winner of your social media contest, your work isn’t done. It is important to analyse the social media contest’s outcomes to learn what went right, what could have been done better, whether or not the investment was worthwhile, and what to do differently in the future.
Keep an eye on things like participation, likes, shares, and conversion rates, and use the content created to promote future marketing campaigns and contests.