Social media offers the perfect medium for running competitions.

use social media competition

It is a great way to engage with your online audience and enhance your brand profile.

Feeling excited and can’t wait to start? Good.

Before you get on to letting people know about your competition, there are some pieces to put in place to make it success:

1. Which Social Media Platform?
Instagram is the most visual site, which makes it perfect for photo-based competition. Twitter works well for verbal competitions. Make sure to use hashtags to track entries. Facebook works well for photos, videos and sweepstakes.

2. Set your Rules and Make the Process Transparent
It is important to be upfront and clear how are you going to pick your winners. All three platforms have each specific rules. It is useful to know the rules before you decide on platform and competition.

3. Choose Entry Method and Prizes
Make it simple to enter and provide clear details of how to enter. Include dates for entry and simple steps participants need to take to enter. Choose prizes that are relevant to your target audience – be creative.

5. Promote Your Competition
Here are some ideas to try:

  • Amplify it on as many platforms you can: Instagram, Flickr, Tumblr, StumbleUpon…)
  • Make your competition look & feel is great
  • Develop you social media calendar with you posts in advance
  • Use Facebook/Twitter ads or Facebook promoted posts/Twitter promoted tweets
  • Send out an email to your mailing list encouraging “forward to a friend”.
  • Syndicate it through blogs
  • Create a competition button and include it on your email signature
  • Create a pin for your competition and ask for repins
  • Add your competition to some of the sites that list and promote new competitions
  • Don’t forget about off-line promotion too

6. Measuring It
Know your goals before the start. Once you know your goals, you need to manage the competition to see if you are meeting them and always test and test again. Ways to manage your competition include:

  • You will need a third-party app like Woobox, Binkd, Votigo  to handle it
  • Use hashtags and mentions on Twitter
  • Look at likes, comments  and mentions
  • Use Social Mention or set up Google Alerts for mentions of your company, brand or competition

7. Next Steps
Even when the competition is over, you can still use it for promotion. For example, you can:

  • Continue your post-launch communications plan
  • Profile the winner on your blog
  • Do a roundup of the best or most interesting competition entries
  • Share your plans for a future competition

Hope your experience is interesting one. Share your successes in comments.