How to Run a Successful Facebook Contest

Whether you already have a Facebook presence or are trying to increase your social media reach, running a contest is a great way to bring in new business and re-engage your existing clientele. Contests give you an opportunity to highlight new products or services, celebrate changes to your business, and can re-energize your for that all-important page-view activity!

Choose A Method
When it comes to running contests, choosing the most effective method is important. For a small-scale project, you may find it reasonable to simply assign numbers to entries and use a random number generator to choose such as random.org: a social media-friendly version of a standard ticket raffle. Larger contests, though, tend to work more efficiently with widget-style tools that help you manage entries and ensure a truly random draw.

One of the most popular of these tools is RaffleCopter, or similar alternatives such as PromoSimple and PunchTab. These services come with a variety of feature options at various costs, but all include the option to increase the number of entries through engagement on multiple platforms, and in some cases can be installed as an app right within your Facebook page for ease of use! If you’re looking to improve your web presence and connect users from one platform to another corner of your social media presence, these tools can effectively bring new followers to your pages on Google+, Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and others.

What to Include in Give-Away Contests?
The web is full of giveaways, so creating an audience-building giveaway for your business might require a bit of brainstorming and creativity on your part. To get you started, though, a few suggestions:

• Gift certificates, which have the double-impact of both the attention brought by the giveaway itself in addition to the usual gift certificate bonus of bringing people to your store or online storefront, where they are likely to spend beyond the value of the certificate;
• A free offering of your newest product or service offering. This type of giveaway gives you the opportunity to present and highlight the new offering in a high-impact way, increasing interest and awareness among your clientele.
• Your most popular item. Giveaways of popular items or services allows your satisfied customers to praise the product to newcomers, and may bring people over the fence.
• Bundles, in which you partner with other businesses or branches within your own business to offer a giveaway, can increase the reach by enabling you to create a high-value giveaway with minimal impact to any single source. Additionally, the combined promotion efforts can gain greater reach than a solo giveaway.

Tips for Maximizing Engagement

• Resist the urge to over-promote your contest. A comfortable balance usually falls somewhere in the range of one contest promotional post for every 3-5 of your standard posts, depending on your usual volume. Over-promoting your contest may have the opposite of your intended effect, potentially alienating those who come for your content rather than engaging both existing and new clientele.
• Set a reasonable timeline. If it will take you some time to promote your contest, a longer deadline may be your best bet. If you plan to align your giveaway with a holiday or other major event, however, a shorter timeline may increase urgency and therefore garner greater engagement. Don’t forget to include a countdown in your posts so people are aware of the deadline and the time they have left to engage.
• Use those multi-platform features! In addition to engaging your clientele in multiple platforms, you’ll also get extra promotion of your contest, and therefore your business, by using all your social media platforms in the contest.
• When posting your contest, include an “engagement question” corresponding to the giveaway in some way. If you are a baby gear store offering a new baby carrier, for example, questions about babywearing, users’ favourite patterns or add-ons, etc will help encourage conversation on the post and therefore extend the post’s reach.
• Similarly, some contest widget tools may have an option to allow an extra entry for users who answer a question. This can be a great way to increase engagement, right in your contest tools.
• Use your page analytics to determine when your page or site gets the most activity, and schedule your contest promotion early in those periods to maximize visibility and reach.

Contests can be very effective for increasing social media activity, bringing in new business, and engaging existing customers. Creating an effective contest using versatile tools can maximize your use of this powerful option!