Run a Facebook Contest in 5 Steps
Social media has become an integral online marketing tool for businesses. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Google+ allow customers or followers the unique opportunity of interacting with your business or brand. Setting up an online presence is easy enough, but gaining a following can be difficult. The One way to help build a social media following is to organize a giveaway or contest to entice customer interaction and activity on your page, keeping them interested and promoting your business. .Here are 5 easy steps to set up your contest or Facebook promotion
1. Set Goals Setting goals will help yourself determine how you should run your contest or promotion. Are you looking to increase followers? Increase awareness? Increase activity on your page? Increase sales? Setting goals in advance will give you something to measure effectiveness and the end of the promotion.
2. Organize the Contest
You have some decisions to make based on the goals you set up. There are different kinds of contests that require different kinds of participation. For example, to increase your following or page activity, a parameter of the contest might be to ‘like’ and ‘share’ the page to be entered to win. For more user interaction and sharing, you might try and ‘caption this’ style contest where you post a photo and users submit funny or clever captions to you photos. To promote your brand you could have users submit photos of them with your products. There are many ways you could go. Use your goals to make a decision on what kind of contest you want to run.
Other things to consider:
- Time Frame
- How to be entered to win
- How the winner will be selected
- The Prize
- Conditions
Usually for a smaller contest 2 weeks is a good time frame. You will have to decide how the winner will be chosen, whether it will be random, will it be based on some merit of the submissions? Who will be the judge etc. Are you giving away products, services, coupons etc. You need a good incentive for people to enter into your contest. The better the prize, the more attention you will get. Make sure the contest rules require that users like your page.
3. Promoting your contest
You need to get people to notice your contest. Use your social media and promote your contest regularly to bring people back to your page. Use your other social media profiles to promote your contest and use popular and relevant hashtags. Be sure to include a link back to your Facebook page for users to enter. Use your e-mail lists and contacts if you have a newsletter, include a note about it. You should also post a link to it and promote it right on your website. Post regularly about the contest, reminding users to join. Posts with photos are more eye-catching. Use a photo to promote your contest.
4. Monitor and Interact
Keep track of the posts and submissions coming in. Post comments and responses to entries and ‘like’ all of the posts coming in. If you are receiving submissions, share one every so often to get other people to want to join. People want to feel like their posts are being noticed and seen.
5. Publish and Notify the winner(s)
When you choose the winner, make it public. Send them a message on Facebook and make a post with their name in it, and their winning entry, if applicable and have it featured on your website and other social media platforms as well. If you promote your winners well, it will give users even more incentive to participate next time your run a promotion.
Facebook contests are great for your business and easy to run. You can make them recurring or build up to a big prize with smaller giveaways. For more tips and tools for getting the most out of your social media profiles, contact Boston Web Marketing at (857) 526-0096