What If I Told You About A Method Of Boosting Social Engagement With Your Brand That Is Not Only Fun And Creative, But Also Simple And Inexpensive?
Welcome to the world of social media contests – a way to leverage your businesses’ online following that capitalizes on the inherent strengths of social media.
Contests can accelerate the growth of your social following, create ownership in your brand by engaging followers in business decisions, and turn your customers into product promoters.
The sky’s the limit as far as designing social media contests particular for your business. Let these four themes serve as a launching point, then add your own unique spin!
1) Contests That Grow Your Following And Generate Leads
A social media contest can be as straightforward as offering a chance to win a prize in return for completing a form or entering an email address.
Forms can be set-up on your social pages with third-party tools. They convert your social media followers into known leads.
If you are simply interested in social media audience growth, choose a contest that your audience enters by tagging friends in the comments section of one of your posts, sharing or retweeting your post, or using a hashtag you create related to the contest.
Shares, retweets, and tags are all effective ways to get your brand in front of your followers’ connections – an exponential increase in exposure that is sure to lead to new followers for your business.
With contests like these, with no qualitative difference between entrants, choosing a winner is a matter of a random selection.
2) Contests That Endear Your Business To Customers
What creative, funny, and unique ways can your customers come up with to interact with your business or product? Ask them! And award the best entries.
Since everyone has a camera/video camera in their pocket, it’s easy for customers to produce awesome content featuring your brand. This is not only a marketing asset, it also develops a deeper connection between your customers and your business.
Develop Your Strategy For Social Media Marketing
Ask contestants to share their entries on your Facebook page and either judge them yourself to choose a winner, or post them and have your audience judge, with the winner being the image or video that garners the most likes.
3) Contests That Crowdsource Product Ideas Or Slogans
Engaging your audience in the product development and marketing process is a great way to engender brand loyalty and ownership. Use social media to ask your followers for new product ideas – new flavors, colors, or other customizations. Ask them to submit ways to solve a particular industry problem, or ideas for a new slogan.
You will get valuable feedback and a more engaged customer base.
4) Guessing Games And Captions
Another simple and effective contest idea is to offer guessing games, fill-in-the-blank statements, and write-your-own captions.
Ask your fans to guess where a photo was taken, for example. Or ask them to fill in the blank on a statement like “the best time I had with (your product) was when ____ “
It’s also fun to post behind-the-scenes pictures of your business and ask your followers to provide funny captions.
These types of contests can be judged, or, if you have multiple people answer a guessing game correctly, for example, winners can be chosen at random.
Unleash the power of social media in a new way with contests. Both you and your customers will have a blast, and your business will reap lasting benefits.
Thanks for stopping by,
Laura
Breezy Hill Marketing is a Vermont web design company specializing in marketing strategy, social media marketing, and building beautiful, optimized, and mobile responsive websites. We work with clients in Vermont and throughout the United States.
