Social media competitions. Contests. Giveaways. Everyone loves being a winner, baby. So it is that increasing numbers of businesses and brands are uploading creative competitions to their social media marketing strategies.
For sure, if your objectives orbit brand awareness and engagement, giveaways and competitions are an effective way of driving fast engagement. They are designed to do what social media is fundamentally about for business – getting social with customers and prospects.
The good news is that you don’t need to give away a Ferrari – although you could. And, at CMA, we have, in reality though, something as small as an Amazon voucher can make a really big social impression.
Ready to produce a winning social media competition for your business? Great. In this article, we take a look at a few ideas for running a successful social media contest that boosts your social engagement and brand awareness.
What social platform should I run my competition on?
All social platforms have their pros and cons when it comes to social competitions and, in essence, the one (or ones) you choose comes down to:
- Your campaign goals: What do you want to achieve? More Facebook followers? More page likes? Newsletter sign ups? Increased engagement? Website traffic?
- Your audience: Where do they hang out? Facebook? Twitter? Instagram? TikTok? All of the above?
Despite adding an additional level of complexity, you might want to run your contests across various platforms to further your outreach. Twitter and Instagram, for instance, go together like a bird in a nest as they complement each other through their platform support of hashtags.
And, if you’re going to put a paid social media promotion budget behind you competition, you could consider these ‘placements’ to showcase your ad:
Feeds / Stories / In-stream (for videos) / Search / Messages / In-article / Apps / Sites (external to Facebook, for example)
How should people enter my competition?
The mechanic through which the target audience enters your competition will ultimately be defined by what you want your social media campaign to achieve. Think of it this way: the prerequisite for entry could simply be to follow your page.
Likewise, to be in with a chance of winning the contest and to generate entries, you could direct the targeted audience to take one or more of the following actions:
- Like the post
- Tag a friend in the comments
- Leave a comment
- Share the post
In creating a fun social media contest, keep it simple and resist the urge to ask your target audience to jump through too many hoops.
10 social media contest giveaway types
#1 News jacking: Competitions based on current events and affairs, tapping into what is happening in the mainstream news as a means to entice and grow followers.
#2 Seasonal competitions: Giving your target audience a chance to win product(s) during any set seasonal event such as Christmas and Easter to mention but a few.
#3 Multiple winners: There doesn’t need to be necessarily just one winner, having multiple winners can help promote different products.
4# Follower milestones: Reaching a milestone, such as one million followers, presents an authentic celebratory reason to run a giveaway competition.
#5 Choose your prize: For this contest, entrants get the option of choosing what product they want, or the subsection of the product they want. This giveaway idea encourages the target audience to go to the product website and look at the options available, resulting in increased traffic.
#6 Hashtag promotion: Hashtags are another way to gain more followers via a social media giveaway. Regular giveaway hashtags can help your competitions reach a wider audience. This is due to the hashtag’s popularity, which causes individuals to deliberately search it out in order to find interesting competitions to enter.
Making it personal
Here are a few personalised giveaway social media ideas to help you further increase engagement.
#7 ‘Like and share’
COMPETITION: Want to win XXX? We’re keeping it simple, so all you need to do to enter is:
- Follow us
- Like this post
- Share to your story (don’t forget to tag XXX)
#8 ‘Caption this’
Post caption:
COMPETITION: Want to win XXX? Simply caption this image to be in the chance of winning!
#9 ‘Spot the difference’
Post caption:
COMPETITION: Spot the difference. Tell us what’s changed when you swipe across these images, for the chance to win XXX.
#10 ‘Choose your favourite’
Post caption:
COMPETITION: We’re giving you the chance to win XXX. So tell us which of these is your favourite and why!
#11 ‘Name this’
Post caption:
COMPETITION: This (drawing / track/ product) needs a name! Simply make your suggestions in the comments for the chance to win XXX.
#12 ‘Have your say’
Post caption:
COMPETITION: Tell us below, for the chance to win XXX.
#13 ‘Nearest guess’
Post caption:
COMPETITION: Can you guess?
#14 ‘Quick crossword’
Post caption:
COMPETITION: Fill out the crossword and share your story, tagging XXX for the chance to win XXX.
#15 ‘Who said it?’
Post caption:
COMPETITION: Match up these inspirational quotes, and share on your story (tagging us) to win XXX.
#16 ‘Who am I?’
Post caption:
COMPETITION: Tell us who this is based on (the facts below/this silhouette) for the chance to win XXX.
Image suggestion:
Tasty takeaways
Before you launch your social media competition, ensure you’ve ticked these off your checklist:
- Decide on your preferred social media platforms and define your goals – i.e. are you after more followers, engagement, awareness etc.
- Pick a prize and build a suitable mechanic. Don’t ask too much from your users – keep it as simple as possible such as ‘follow this page’ and ‘comment for a chance to win’. Resist asking them to follow, like, comment and share – the higher you raise the bar, typically, the lower the entrants.
- Produce your social content and images – consider making the text on the image large, utilising thumb-stopping buzzwords such as ‘competition’, ‘giveaway’, ‘content etc.
- Add your competition campaign content to a social media schedule – so you know what is going out and when.
- Create a competition hashtag to help bring consistency across all your posts and help you track the impact.
- Decide if you are going organic or will add a paid budget behind it. If so, choose your audience carefully and set caps on your budget for cost control.
- Do you have terms and conditions? It’s advisable to add these to your competition. You can do so by creating a simple landing page on your website with the T&Cs for your competition. If you’re a big business, your legal team will be able to knock something up or, if budgets are tight, you’ll be able to find a free boilerplate template on the internet you can modify.
- When you pick a winner, let them know then announce it on social and tag them in to amplify things like a Spinal Tap concert.
- Monitor your campaign on a daily basis and make tweaks as you go to improve return on investment.
- Conduct a thorough report once the campaign ends and take the insights gleaned into future social media competitions.
So there we have it, a few tips and tricks to help you run a successful social media competition. If you need help from the pros, hit the link and throw any questions and queries our way.
