Guest post provided by Amy Clear
More than 82 percent of page administrators say that running Facebook contests helped them achieve their goals. Social media promotions are great ways to widen your fan base, increase brand loyalty, and collect customer data. Read on to discover the most effective types of Facebook contests.
Run a Simple Sweepstakes Contest
A sweepstakes contest encourages entrants to leave their details for the chance to win a major prize, to be drawn at random on a set date. Sweepstakes are one of the simplest contests, as they’re easy to set up and enter.
As fans submit their personal details to win, these promotions are a great way to expand your email list or learn about your target demographic. The simply entry process encourages more people to participate. Studies show sweepstakes have more participants than any other popular Facebook contest type. Keeping the entry form to two or three key fields will increase the number of entrants.
Sweepstakes contests don’t typically provide the rich user experiences of many promotions though. You can enhance the interactive qualities, and broaden your contest’s reach, by offering additional entries to users who post the promotion on the wall or invite more Facebook friends to enter.
Create an Instant-Win Competition
Just like a sweepstakes, instant-win contests are games of chance. However, users are more engaged with these promotions as they instantly learn whether they’ve won or lost. This process encourages customers to return to try their luck again.
Instant-win contests are typically better than sweepstakes for creating long-term brand awareness as players become more invested in the outcome. However they’re not usually shared, so they typically reach a relatively small audience.
Run a Creative Contest
Showcase the talents of your Facebook fans, and attract some new ones too, with a creative contest. These types of competitions are the most engaging as they see players submitting polished pieces for a chance to win.
Facebook photo contests attract more participants than any other type of creative contest, followed by essay contests, and video contests. Participants may be most willing to share photos as they’re easily uploaded from smartphones. In contrast, videos require a substantial amount of bandwidth. You must be using a high-speed internet provider like HughesNet to regularly enter contests like that. If you believe you may be lacking that kind of high-speed connection in your social networking life, make sure to check out some HughesNet reviews.
Encouraging your Facebook fan base to vote on the best submissions is a great way to inspire greater interaction and save yourself some work. Installing an app with fraud protection and moderation can ensure entrants don’t tamper with the integrity of the voting process.
Even with such an app, creative contests must be monitored so they require a greater time investment than the other promotions. However, they’re one of the most effective tools for creating long-term brand awareness. They also have the capacity for viral reach, which can open up a massive new audience. The work required to create entries will limit participation though. If your goal is to collect email addresses, a sweepstakes or instant-win contest is a better fit.
Whether you want to increase awareness of your business or collect details about your customers, a Facebook contest is an awesome way to do it.
Author Bio:
Amy is a freelance writer/editor currently living in Florida. When she’s not playing around with words she loves spending time in the kitchen, watching indie films and cuddling her dog, Boogie.
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