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How do you create social media contests fast? A successful social media contest that converts leads to sales is the best way to get results fast.
Here are the must-follow steps you need to take to design an effective social media contest. These are the concrete steps that have been proven to work.
Quick Start: 7 Steps to High Converting Social Media Contests
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Article Contents
IN THIS ARTICLE:
- What you need to have to run a social media contest
- What platforms to use for your social media contest
- How to attract participants to your social media contest
Step 1: Design your campaign
The first step to putting together a social media contest is planning.
There are many different types of contests that you can run from photo contests to video contests.
Determine what type of contest your audience would be interested in.
If you are just using the social media contest to increase your social media followers, go for a contest that doesn’t require a lot of effort to participate in.
This will increase the number of entries so that you can achieve your goal of reaching 100K followers or any other vanity metric that your social media account needs to have for social proof.
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Step 2: Choose a prize
If you want to attract participants to your social media contest, you need an awesome prize.
We recommend that you go through a contest company to run your social media contest because contest prize fulfillment services often have greater access to prizes.
With prize indemnity insurance, offering an amazing prize becomes cost-effective and hassle-free.
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Step 3: Test out different platforms
When it comes to making sure that your contest delivers an exceptional customer experience, you should always test it out on different platforms.
Our recommendations:
For a video contest, choose a platform that is known for video engagement such as TikTok or YouTube.
For a photo contest, use Instagram.
For a caption contest, use Twitter.
For a B2B employee contest, use LinkedIn.
You want to use platforms that will seemless deliver your contest campaign content without creating additional headaches for your participants.
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Step 4: Draft your contest rules
Every social media platfom has it’s own Terms of Service and set of rules when it comes to contests and giveaways.
You also need to make sure that your contest follows all applicable federal, state, and local laws.
Be sure to make it clear in all social media posts and in your contest rules that the social media platform is not sponsoring your contest.
Above all, don’t copy contest rules you find on other sites.
A contest rules template can be a useful starting point for understanding what goes into contest rules.
However, you should always have an experienced contest administrator who knows contest laws or a contest lawyer draft your official rules.
Step 5: Design Your Contest Promotion Strategy
A social media contest promotion strategy outlines where you will promote your contest before it goes live.
Dependinig on your industry, you’ll use different tactics.
Here’s a list of 50 of the most effective contest marketing tactics that also work for social media sweepstakes.
Read More ▶ 50 Proven Ways to Attract Participants to Your Sweepstakes or Contest
Plan to promote your social media contest anywhere that your audience hangs out to drive participants back to your contest entry form page.
Step 6: Set KPIs
A Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is a both a goal and method for evaluating the success of your contest campaign.
Social media contest KPIs to track:
- Number of participants
- Number of shares
- Daily number of followers gained
- Total number of followers gained
- Number of participants coming from referrals
- Reach achieved by your contest
- Positive comments on contest posts
- Negative comments on contest posts
- Click through rate
- Cost per participant
- SMS open rate
- Email open rate
- Attribution rate
- Social media ROI
- Sales ROI
- Revenue per participant
Step 7: Measure your results
You need to connect your social media profiles and contest platforms to all of your other marketing tools.
This is how you measure the ROI of your campaign and track your results in real-time.
Some examples of popular enterprise software tools marketing professionals use include:
- Google Analytics (must-have)
- Bing Webmaster Tools (must-have)
- Hubspot
- Salesforce
- Zendesk
- Slack
- Airtable
- Monday.com
By integrating these tools with your contest platform, you’ll also be able to track your participants as they move through the sales funnel and become customers.
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Long Term Social Media Contest Marketing Planning
Long term contest marketing planning takes time. Don’t expect the reach of your brand to increase overnight. Work with a contest company to design a social media contest that is targeted to your goals to give your brand an initial boost and then optimize as you get some traction.
Looking for a social media contest platform to help you with your next promotion? Sweepsify helps you find top contest companies in seconds. Create your free Premium account now to get started.
