Winning with Social Media Contests

We all love to hear those words – You’re a winner! It always brings a lift to your day and your ego. So few things attract attention and participation like freebies. That’s why social media contests are becoming increasingly popular as a way of actively engaging customers online. There is a ready audience that is eager to get involved.

Online contests are effective in generating buzz about your brand and message, boosting your fan count (Likes) and building your customer database; but most important of all your brand is front of mind during the period of engagement.

Local companies are quickly catching on to the benefits of online contests and are increasingly using this marketing strategy to push brands, products and services as well as encourage client interaction and feedback.

Scotia Investments recently hosted a “Name the Webinar” competition on Facebook and Twitter to promote the bank’s popular Scotia Webinar series. Entrants were asked to make suggestions for the next online seminar.  The most thought-provoking, original and relevant entry would win a Blackberry Torch or an iPad.  The bank is extremely happy with the response, with the two-week competition attracting more than 2,000 unique visitors to the competition page.  There were 226 entrants – 178 from Facebook and 48 from Twitter.

This kind of engagement is critical to the success of the Scotia Investments webinar series, which aims to build the bank’s market influence and demonstrate its leadership in financial matters. And competitions don’t always have to be serious business. Scotia regularly uses fun Facebook competitions to give away tickets to popular entertainment events.  Entrants may be asked to unscramble sentences, answer questions or write a creative paragraph to win prizes.

Others are coming up with similar ideas to get their information out to the public and to engage consumers and stakeholders. The US Embassy in Kingston just kicked off a Facebook competition inviting people to become fans of the Embassy’s Facebook page and to invite as many friends as possible to its page. The ‘top-fan’ will win a lap top computer, while iPod Shuffles will be given to the top 4 persons who recruit the most friends to “like” the Embassy’s Facebook page. 

Panmedia has run competitions giving away tickets to Caribbean Fashion Week and other popular entertainment events; dinners for two at various restaurants during Valentine’s Day; and a gift basket to the highest game scorer in the Grab The Bunny Easter competition. As part of its “Destination True Value” campaign to drive people to its newly renovated superstore, Rapid True Value (RTV), a member of the Grace Kennedy Group, hosted a ten-week Facebook competition where each week entrants were required to answer a question about RTV, its products and services. Winners received  $3000 RTV gift certificate.

Executing a competition can be cheap and easy, but it must be planned properly to reap useful results. Take a good look at your target market and answer the following questions: Is your target market the type of people to enter contests? What kind of contests would they be likely to enter? What prizes would be of interest to them?

Write your criteria and rules carefully and thoroughly and stick to them. The social part of social media kicks in more mischievously in these situations and it is easy for a company to find itself called on to justify its decisions. Facebook has guidelines for running contests and companies should read these to learn how to properly administers them.

It is important to note that social media contests should be executed as part of an ongoing social media strategy and not be a one-off event that spikes the number of ‘likes’ but has no ongoing return. If you are not interacting with these users on a regular basis with content that is relevant to them, these will not convert into more business for your company. When done right, online contests bring invaluable benefits and can be a win win exercise for the company and the end user.