These Ingredients will Make Your Social Media Contest a Rocking Success

The competition to get the attention of the target customer is going high. Additionally, the brands are struggling to generate engagement to retain their existing customers. In a situation when any time your competition can walk away with your customer base, you need to brainstorm something unique to hold on to the attention of the people.

Social media contests are getting popular by the days, due to this reason. The modern-day marketers are creating effective social media contest strategy for both reach and engagement. Such contests are planned to stir up excitement as well.

The problem with social media contests is – these events need painstaking planning and careful execution. The fact to remember is – even though social media contests come with many benefits, these offer ample potential for failure as well. This is one of the reasons why you need to be careful when you are planning a social media contest.

The experts offer some ingredients which will make your social media contest successful.

Pay Attention to Venue

Well, yes like an event the social media contests too require venue planning. Where are you planning to organize the contest? Is it going to be Facebook? Is it going to be Instagram? Is it going to be YouTube?

To find the right venue for your social media contest, you need to research your target customers. You need to find where they usually hang out. Without this information, you will not be able to find the right social media venue for your contest. This is why – the experts suggest that you go for an in-depth customer research before planning the social media contest.

Entry Details

You need to plan the contest entry process before anything else. How will people enter the contest? There are countless ways you can invite people to enter the contest. However, there are two different ways to enter a contest. You can allow anyone to enter the contest. Or, you can create some kind of criteria to select participants.

Usually, 'vote', 'share' and 'like' are the ways to enter a contest. You can choose any one of these.

Choosing the Right Name

Name plays a big role in generating interest of the participants. This is one of the essential factors of effective social media event planning. You need to find a catchy name for the contest. Without the right name, you will not be able to turn the contest into a brand.

It is essential that you keep the name of the contest short enough for the people to remember. Investing time on the task of finding the name is essential. You must remember that if people don’t connect to the name of the contest, they will not be interested in participating.

Choosing the Right Theme

Like the name of the contest, the theme also plays an essential role. You need to think this over carefully if you want your social media contest to be a success. The theme of the contest depends on the target customers. It is essential that your customers connect to contest theme. For this reason, you need to know about their liking, disliking and other interests.

Outline of the Contest

A contest outline is important. You need to plan out the contest from first to the very last moment carefully. From creating the contest entry to planning the winner announcement, you need to have everything written down on paper. You need to have the knowledge of contest closing, contest opening and also the reward which you are going to offer to the winner.

Visual Stimulation

Along with text-based contents, you need to use graphics as well. You will also need to use videos to engage the target customers. You must plan the cover images, logos, and email templates carefully. Remember that visuals have the power to attract the attention of the people. If you keep using text-based contents only, you will not be able to draw the attention of the people effectively.

Plan the Reward

You need to plan the winner’s reward carefully. The reward should be something which people will remember for a long time. Make sure to be creative with this. Social media contests offer predictable rewards like e-books or white papers. Don’t go the predictable way. Plan something new which will excite the contest participants. The reward depends on the type of products you sell.

Contest Strategy

You must create a strategy for the pre-launch period of the contest. You must also create the strategy for launch phase as well. In this phase, you must plan how you are going to promote your contest. This is the stage where you create the awareness for the contest. The people who are already following you need to know about the contest. Also, people who don’t know about your product must be aware of the contest launch.

You must create the promotion strategy accordingly. Some contest organizers use mysterious copies like – The Secret is Going to be Revealed Soon. Such copies generate interest of the people. They wait to see what secret is going to be revealed.

There are other ways to generate interest. You can offer information about the contest. You can also declare the prize which you are going to offer to the winner. There are ample ways to do it. Make sure to do some research about social media contest promotion strategy for engagement.

Planning the Amplification

Social media contests need amplification sometimes. Properly planned amplifications can help you reach a large number of people. The more people you reach, the bigger your chance of brand expansion will be. Paid ads work as the contest amplification. You can choose a couple of platforms to run the paid ads. Usually, marketers use Facebook or Instagram for the ad campaign. You can use Pinterest as well.

Lastly, remember that every contest has some sort of rules and legal requirements. This you need to plan out before announcing the contest launch date. It is essential that the participants know about the rules and the regulations of the contest before entering.