5 Techniques for Running a Successful Social Media Competition

There’s one surefire method for generating massive audience engagement online: with a successful social media competition.

Whether it’s a giveaway or contest, people love to win free items. The power of social media also ensures your business will receive plenty of attention. If the snowball effect takes place, where more and more people share the contest when they enter. It can result in hundreds of thousands of potential customers becoming aware of your brand.

Before you start dreaming of such lofty figures, however, you require a strong plan for your competition. Regarding the latter, read below for five techniques that will ensure your social media competition is a successful one:

1. Gain insight and advice

A competition might seem like a foolproof idea. People are going to enter regardless. Yet when doing something like this, you want to maximize results.

To do this, take a look at previous contests run by competitors. What prizes did they offer? Which type of media did they use to grab the attention of social media users? What level of engagement did they receive? Which social media platform did they use? This type of insight supplies a rough idea as to what you can come to expect from your own competition.

If you want advice on how to better what your competition achieved, don’t be scared to gain assistance from a web consultant. They will have the knowledge and past experience to ensure your competition is maximized to its full potential.

2. Determine a budget

Before you begin the competition journey, you have to decide how much money you want to spend. If the prize is an in-house product, this will help to reduce costs. Yet this isn’t all that needs to be considered.

For instance, do you want to spend extra to have your competition featured on your social media platform of choice? Plus there’s also the possibility of purchasing software – more on that below.

3. Utilize specialist software

Sure, you could run a simple Twitter competition where you ask for people to ‘Like’, ‘Retweet’, comment, follow, or do all four to enter. You might even do an Instagram-based contest asking for people to send photos in to enter. Perhaps it could be something as simple as tagging a friend on Facebook to participate.

While all of these are valid options that will ultimately help to grow your social media following, they fail to allow the competition to reach its full potential.

Why? Well, one of the big reasons is simple: you’re not acquiring any email addresses. Email marketing is a massive asset for any company. However a retweet or tag is not going to release any precious address details. Another step is needed.

This step can be filled with specialist software. There’s an issue that hosting the rest of the competition away from social media could lead to a drop in engagement, but this can be avoided if you’re creative.

As for what this specialist software entails, the choice is up to you. While there are contest-related packages available on the market, you can get something truly unique and tailor-made by enlisting the services of a specialist company. For example, the team at Digital Silk can devise a competition and implement it seamlessly with your website.

With this, you can provide your competition with, say, an element of gamification. Not only do you create a more memorable experience for each entrant, but you can also gain those all-important email addresses.

4. Run the competition

When everything is in place, and you’re adhering to competition rules for your social media option, there’s nothing left to do other than launch your competition.

Always give your competition every chance to succeed. Even if engagement levels start off slowly, it only takes the right person to enter the competition for it to explode in popularity. To create more buzz, don’t forget to also promote the contest by firing out an email newsletter and posting about it on your website.

5. Analyze the results

The competition is done. The prize/s to the lucky winner/s are sent out. Your social media figures have increased. You have collected those email addresses. Now what?

At this stage, you have to analyze how the competition actually went. Did you achieve the goals you set? Did everything go well? Could improvements be made? It’s important to study your social media engagement numbers and look at the overall picture. This way, you will have the foundation to create an even more successful social media competition next time.

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