Why you need to run a social media contest

Social media contests are an amazing opportunity to engage with your audience, create brand awareness, and generate leads or conversions. Contests have a conversion rate of almost 34%, which is higher than other content types. One of the quickest ways to create an online contest is by sourcing user-generated content from your audiences.

Social media contests are becoming an increasingly popular way to promote products or services. They can be created and run at an affordable price, with minimal time investment on the part of the brand. The process is relatively easy: simply post your contest requirements online and encourage people to submit their best entry by following all of the rules. In return, you'll receive lots of user-generated content to promote your brand.

Your social media contest idea

One way to start your ideation of a contest is by asking questions on social media or offering prizes for popular responses ahead of your actual contest. It will help you generate a lot of the information needed to create an effective contest, such as what types of videos people would share or how they will respond.

The key to a successful social media contest is simplicity. When you make it easy for people to enter, they will be more likely to do so and share their entries with others. The best contests are those that involve some type of creative video activity rather than asking them to explain why they should win.

Contest rules

To get people to share their videos, you'll want to make the contest as easy and seamless as possible. You can do this by making it clear what they need to record themselves doing or producing in order to enter your contest. We have heard previously, that it is best to provide many ways for a participant to submit videos, our opinion is that it's best to upload them straight onto a platform like Vloggi through a landing page rather than emailing, file-sharing or posting on other social channels.

We also suggest providing a video template that participants can use for their videos, so they know what is expected of them and it will make your life as an administrator much easier if you need to review all entries received.

How and When

You'll also want to keep in mind want of what success looks like for your brand and how many video entries will be enough for you to feel successful. We also recommend considering whether or not there are any incentives/prizes in mind.

You'll want to make sure you consider the social channels your target demographic spends time on, the best times and days to receive the most reach.

For example, if your target audience is teens or college students and they spend most of their time on Snapchat then it would make sense to run the contest throughout the school semesters when many universities are back in session.

If you want more people to enter but don't have an incentive that's enticing enough for them (e.g. free product or service) then you might need to take a deep dive into learning more about them through social media analytics to gain insight about what they want.

Once you've identified the concept, rules, how people will submit entries on social media, it's time to create the social media contest.

Launching your contest on a social media platform

A social media campaign may consist of a Facebook post, Instagram story or live video announcement to kick off your competition. Share it with an attractive image (video is even better!) and copy that tells people exactly what they need to do in order to enter for a chance at winning prizes. You’ll also want lots of compelling imagery to accompany it.

You want to make it as easy and convenient as possible for people to enter. That means providing social media handles where they can share their content, tagging your brand in the post or video, along with adding a hashtag so that there can be additional social media awareness and possibly pushing the contest into virality!

Once launched, it's time to move toward video submission collection and moderation. This is a pain point with many brands but hopefully becomes a little easier if you are using a great content platform. If that is a hurdle that you are facing, take a look at Vloggi to get started collecting videos from anyone, anywhere.