Facebook contests are nothing new, and it takes a bit of creativity and a unique approach to stand out from your competitors. It’s also important to remember, as we said last week, that activity on Facebook (especially “likes”) doesn’t necessarily lead to sales. You need to turn this social media activity into a blog subscription or a in-store sale in order for it to count as a genuine success. Here’s how to make the most of your campaign.
(Keep in mind that in order to run a Facebook contest, you can’t ask users to use any native Facebook features other than liking a page, checking into a place, or connecting to an app. You can’t use “likes” as votes. Use a third party app like Wildfire. Check Facebook’s Page Guidelines before setting up any contest or campaign.)
1. Ask followers to check in
Facebook allows users to check into their current location when they post an update from Facebook, using Facebook places. Asking a Facebook fan to let their friends know that they are at your location is a much more effective way to spread the word than to simply ask for a “like.” Offering a chance to win a prize, or simply giving your customer a discount, can be a great way to encourage them to check in to your location on Facebook.
2. Make it a Social Contest
A social media contest shouldn’t work like a lottery. It should be inherently social. In other words, the way the contest is structured should lend itself to social engagement. A contest where the participants pick the winner is far better than a contest where you pick the winner, or the winner is chosen at random. (Again, the winner must be chosen through a third part app, not by tagging or liking.)
3. Integrate Your Blog and Other Social Networks
There’s no reason to limit the contest to Facebook, and in fact this is a bad idea. The whole point of the contest should be to boost brand awareness, and your ultimate goal should be to pull them from Facebook on to your own channels. By cross promoting a campaign on Foursquare and Google+ Local, for example, you can multiply your results. Even better if you can pull them to an app or forum on your own site, where they will be less in the “Facebook mindset” and more likely to interact with your brand.
Please keep in mind that, in order to comply with Facebook’s terms, you must not notify winners through Facebook anyway. They need to be notified through other channels.
4. Make it Simple to Enter
Some of these suggestions might conflict. Asking participants to check into your location isn’t exactly simple. But, after taking everything else into account, you really want the barriers to entry to be as minimal as possible. Ask for as little information as possible, and don’t make the competition so difficult that most people won’t want to take part.
We’d all like to believe that a contest will be so exciting to participants that it will spread virally through the whole social network, but the reality is that things rarely work that way. You certainly want to do as much as you can to make the contest intrinsically viral, but there’s a good chance it’ll take a Facebook ad to reach critical mass. This is one reason you’ll definitely want to focus on ROI as much as exposure when you’re doing any kind of contest.