First of all, make it fun!
Creating Facebook contests is a fantastic way to boost your page’s influence. Why? People love winning! The best contests are the ones that get friends sharing your page with their friends, usually to rack up votes for their own entry.
The awareness of your page will sky-rocket, which of course, makes more people aware of your business.
Building a precedent for regular contests will get people “liking” your page just to be ready when the next contest comes along.
Network9 recently created a Facebook contest for a client of ours.
It was the inaugural contest to promote his brand new website and was a rousing success.
We created a “Fuzzy Friends” photo contest, and gave the winner a gift certificate to a pet grooming salon.
Why did we choose a pet theme?
The subject related to our clients business—treating allergies. And, we know how much people love to share pictures of their adorable best friends.
Facebook analytics speak for themselves:
- 290 Total Reach on Our Posts – up 457.7% from the previous week.
- 278 Post Reach – up 768.8% from the previous week.
- 122 Total Likes
- 42 People Engaged – up 281.8% from the previous week.
Here’s how to win at Facebook contests:
- Be creative! People love to play. But make your contest relevant to your business.
- You’ll need an app (we used Woobox) that will build a Facebook promotion for you.
- Design the contest to appeal to your built-in fan base and attract new fans as well.
- Run your contest between 25-50 days. This are statistically the best length of time to attract the most participation.
- Make sure you moderate the entries to avoid spammers!
- POST about your contest daily! Share it on Twitter, Pinterest and in your newsletter.
- Get people hyped up. If you have any sponsors for your contest, invite them do cross-promotion for you to attract even more Facebook fans.
- If you’re a product manufacturer, give away free products as prizes. It’s a double win for you: more Facebook traffic and perhaps another loyal customer.
Enroll a sponsor
If you don’t make a physical product, get creative and find a sponsor to give you a fantastic prize (we got a gift certificate for our client to give away).
This is a GREAT way to organically connect with businesses and make new contacts. By buying their product to give away, you’re making them money, meaning they’ll be much more likely to help you promote your page in the future.
A few more words to the wise with Facebook contests:
- Plan early—plan ahead
- Do NOT be shy about promoting
- Share, share, share – getting people to “share” the post is the key to success.
Here’s to the winner! You.
