Running a social media contest can be a great way to build and engage your audience. A lot of companies that organize a contest are disappointed when they see the number of people that participate. Here are a 7 tips to run a succesful social media contest:

    1. The prize to win is very important and should be relevant and interesting to your audience.
      Don’t go for something everybody already has because less people will participate. People do think about how likely it is they will win, so when your contest period is long consider working with multiple week prizes.
    2. Make sure the treshold is low: they way you capture data is important. If people can’t immediately share something on social media (via a hashtag for example) but should go to a website, it’s often better to first ask them to take action (e.g. uploading a picture) and afterwards capture contact details. Also be transparant during the data capturing process and clearly indicate the steps people need to follow to avoid drop-out. It’s crucial that you keep it as simple as possible.
    3. Foresee social media share buttons so participants can  share your contest with their friends. Foresee ‘prepared’ share-text to make this as easy as possible.
      Depending on the type of contest you can give participants more points/chance of winning when they share the contest.
    4. Have you thought about working with bloggers or influencers to promote your contest? When you do set-up goals via Google Analytics to track submissions. That way you can also learn how many contest participations you are getting from bloggers/influencers versus for example social media advertising.
    5. Regularly promote your contest and don’t forget to ask people to share it. On Twitter for example you could add “RT = nice” or “#SharingIsCaring”. You’ll be surprised to see how many people share it, just because you ask!
    6. Use targeting when you do social media advertising to promote your contest to make sure you are reaching the right audience and you don’t waste money. You can also consider AB-testing to learn what works best to generate contest participations.
    7. Create a sense of urgency when your contest is almost ending to give people the feeling that time is running out.

social media contest

Do you have more tips to increase contest participation? Don’t hesitate to share them in a comment 😉