Since social media has become the tour de force that it is today, businesses everywhere are turning to social media competitions as a way to increase the profile or reach of their brand. The only problem with this is that businesses sometimes believe that running a social media competition is a simple process. They think that because there’s a prize people will want to play, and these businesses assume that you don’t have to put a lot of thought into your competition in order to get success.
The reality of it is, planning a social media competition campaign is just as complicated as planning any other kind of marketing campaign. It may be even more complicated in the sense you have to be very much on brand and on message. This is because the social media competition is a relatively new field and maybe something that you might not fully understand within the scope of your business yet. No problem, we’re here to help you! Let’s take a look at the steps involved in running a business social media competition in the hopes that it helps your business to success.
Figure out why you are running a social media contest in the first place
There are two key reasons why your business is going to be running a social media contest. For ease of understanding we can call them a short term conversion, or a long term conversion. Depending on what kind of competition you choose, you will require a different strategy, as well as a different measure to determine when you have achieved success. You need to know that it’s not black and white, and that, while elements of both kinds of competitions can be used – it’s ensuring that you have an understanding of what each involves and how they work to get results.
Short-term conversion
This is about getting people invested into your company so that they buy your product. You need to be using your social media competition here to drive sales. This kind of contest might focus on the positive attributes of your promotional products, and on getting people to generate a testimonial or to indicate in some way how great it was to use your product.
- Your product is front and centre
- Success is measured by how much you need to invest into the contest (both in time and in money) and how much you get a return on with sales
Long-term conversion
This is more about building your brand and getting a stronger following or deeper affection for your brand through the competition. You want to ensure that you have a positive brand image and that it’s in line with how you want to be seen. Your product, here, might not be the driving force. Instead you might focus on looking at your brand and having it associated with a fun idea or a cool person/experience. This could be achieved by using your existing fans. You might show off how your customers are using your products and get them to use certain competition hashtags to get the right focus.
- Your product is secondary to the branding
- Your success is measured in engagement and fan base size, as well as the images and pictures submitted as part of the competition.
From here you need to figure out a catchy name for your competitions and then work out the best platform for your products/competition. It might be something as simple as promoting your product or it could be something like a job opportunity with your company. The entry process depends on the prize being offered (usually) so be sure to align them. Good luck with running your competition.
