A Winner's Guide to Social Media Contests

A Winner’s Guide to Running a Social Media Contest
Analysis of Caption, Photo, Video & Written Contests

DETERMINE
ESTABLISH
PARTICIPANT
A PLAN
PERSONA

ANALYZE & PICK YOUR
ENGAGE PRIZE

CHOOSE
LAUNCH & YOUR
PROMOTE CHANNELS

SET SAFETY KNOW THE
RAILS RULES

8 STEPS TO CREATE A SUCCESSFUL CONTEST

Let’s Get Started, Shall We?

Are you looking to further engage your audience and pump up excitement for your brand? In
some way, we all are, right? The social revolution demands that brands push out content
across as many channels as possible in order to connect with and acquire customers. Blogs,
videos, and photos all serve as great vehicles for increasing engagement and building brand What We’ll Cover:
affinity. But what’s even better than consistently delivering great content to your audience?
Developing Your Ideal Contest
Incentivize that exact same audience to produce great content for you. How? Run a
Participant Persona
user-generated caption, photo, video or writing contest!
Determining Your Marketing/Business
By delivering different engagement levels based on the specific nature of your audience, Goals
contests are able to generate a 34% lift in web traffic. How? Contests reward your most loyal
Choosing the Type of Contest & Prize
fans with opportunities to show off their creativity, while encouraging your newest fans to
engage with your brand through voting. Even better, contest entries naturally build a library of Selecting Promotional Channels &
original, user-generated content that can be used for future communications. And with a total Knowing the Rules
of 3 distinct periods for entry, voting, and winner Analyzing Results
announcements, contests fuel the cyclical participation
levels that marketing and community managers work
tirelessly to facilitate.

Whether you’re B2C or B2B, running a social media contest is
a highly-effective way to generate qualified leads, drive
social conversions and engage your fans and customers.

Convinced yet? GRAND
PRIZE

Well, we actually don’t want you to jump in too quickly. The
best contest is not the one with the coolest prize or the
spiffiest design, it’s the one that is pre-planned and well
thought out – that’s what this guide will help you do.

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Learn more at blog.snapapp.com/snapapp-launches-social-media-contest-apps
Build your contest now at snapapp.com/howitworks/contests

1 Determine Your Participant Persona

Every good marketing effort starts with the audience! By carving out a specific profile or
persona for your contest, you’ll easily be able to make decisions about where to promote, what
goals to set and what type of contest to run. Contests tend to have 3 different types of
participants that fall under your overall persona, each with its own distinct behavior. Consider the following:
Are you targeting a new audience or
current customers?
How much do they know about your
brand/product/service?
Are they buyers/users or influencers?
Where and how does your audience
Spectators – Joiners – Creators – give feedback most often? What online
Arrive at a contest via a link Partake in easy-entry Engage at the highest level, places do they “hang out” at?
from an acquaintance and competitions and engage in contributing photos, videos, What are their biggest professional or
tend to engage at a higher level contests by voting, and writing samples personal challenges? What solution do
shallow level commenting, and sharing to contests you want your contest to showcase?
How do you want your audience to
Obviously every company would love to have thousands of creators contributing content to feel? Is the tone supposed to be funny,
their contests, but that’s rare. The key is to maximize user experience for each type of person, competitive, professional, etc?
while encouraging them to engage at higher levels. For example, provide spectators of a
What strengths do you want to
photo contest with an easy browsing interface, allowing them to more easily partake in the
reward? Is your audience creative, tech
voting process as joiners.
savvy, clever, thoughtful, etc?
In general, the spectator-joiner-creator audience breakdown works, but if you’re going to
maximize the effectiveness of your campaign, you need to look at your audience with an even
keener eye. Take a look to the questions to the right. Your answers should dictate the very
nature of the contest that you run.

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2 Establish A Plan

Set Your Goals
Contests are exciting! In fact, sometimes they’re so exciting that it’s easy to forget why exactly you choose to run them in the first place. Before you jump
in, clearly define and prioritize your goals. Do you just want more Facebook likes? Pinterest followers? Are you hoping to collect leads for a mailing list
or sales pipeline? Do you want to drive traffic and promote your company’s brand? A clear set of goals will help you make necessary adjustments after
you launch your contest.

Now that you know WHO you want to target and what you hope to achieve, you must
decide what type of contest will be most effective in engaging your audience and driving
desired outcomes.

Know your target audience
for better results!
Pick Your Poison: Captions, Photos, Videos and Essays, Oh My!
Just like there’s a suitable prize for every target demographic, there’s an ideal promotion type to attract the right kind of participant. Your choice of a
caption, written, photo, or video contest should be based on your participant persona’s activity level and propensity to help you achieve your business
objectives. With each choice, the volume of entry and level of engagement work in opposition of each other. The higher the level of engagement that
exists in your contest, the lower the volume of entrants. For a better idea of this relationship, check out the diagram on the following page.

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Establish A Plan cont.

LO
W
Sitting atop the pyramid are video contests, which VIDEO
have the greatest barriers to entry and BARRIERS
CONTEST
consequently bring in the lowest volume of entries. TO ENTRY

NU
However, videos will always bring in creators who

M
are deeply invested in your brand, and they can also

BE
HIGH
PHOTO UPLOAD /

R
be the perfect medium for B2B companies looking

OF
for some easy publicity and pumped-up traffic.
WRITTEN CONTEST

EN
LOW

TR
IES
Expert Laser Services, a B2B printer retailer and
service provider, saw tremendous results with
their “Destroy Your Printer” video contest,
CAPTION

HI
creating brand buzz, increasing traffic, and

GH
building inbound links. Plus, they accumulated a CONTEST
valuable library of content with zero in-house
production!

In the heart of the pyramid lies photo upload and written contests. Each type brings in more entries than video contests because the entry process is
less time-consuming. The length of the written contest impacts its placement in the pyramid. The longer the essay is, the lower the volume of entry.

Boston inbound marketing agency 451 Marketing ran a B2B social media contest asking companies to explain how social media could help grow their
business. The winner received a 6 month lead generation program valued at $42,000. The contest generated brand interest, established thought
leadership, and supplied the agency with a set of social media examples to utilize in future conversations with other clients.

Caption contests are the easiest way to attract the largest number of participants because the barriers to entry are so small. The photo is already there;
all your participants have to do is call on their creativity and post a response.

Keep in mind that each contest type has its own unique strengths and weaknesses. The key is to understand the engagement tendencies of your audience.
Will your creators invest time into making videos? Are your joiners more willing to vote for photo or essay submissions? Can you incentivize spectators to
participate more easily with caption contests? You must be able to answer these questions before selecting the type of contest to run.

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3 Pick Your Prize

A prize can also impact volume of entries and incentivize more folks to complete a long entry process. Just be careful that a great prize doesn’t diminish
the quality of the lead – or the sincerity for the motivation to enter. As mentioned before, knowing your audience is key. You want your prize to not only
be well received by your current audience, but also to attract the right kind of visitors – visitors who will become loyal fans/customers.

Third Party Prizes
Generic third party prizes, like a TV, computer, or mp3 player might be tempting because they’ll generate a lot of
interest, but they will likely spawn an audience who will be less responsive to follow-up campaigns. The key is to
offer a prize that is tailored specifically to your target audience. That way, you’ll attract the right people- people
who won’t ditch you once your shiny prize is off the table.

A Product From Your Business
Business products or consulting services can be great prize options for B2B companies running social media
contests. Does your company host regular events? Consider giving away airfare & accommodations along with
an event pass. By keeping the prize in line with your business’ core offerings, you automatically identify and bring
in your target audience.

Intangible Prizes
Intangible prizes are great for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, they don’t cost you anything! Participants
can be incentivized to enter a contest if there is a possibility of public recognition. For example, Jimmy Kimmel ran
a hilarious video submission contest asking parents to submit YouTube videos of them telling their kids that they
ate all of their Halloween candy. The prize was simple: winners were featured on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

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4 Choose Your Channels

Hopefully you’re already thinking of multi-channel promotions – that’s the best bet for driving attention to your contest. However, you need to
consider the strengths of each channel you hope to use. For example, Pinterest’s visual nature makes it great for photo-based contests, Twitter’s
character limit naturally makes it an excellent medium for short answer contests, and Facebook is a great host for content based promotions, as the
EdgeRank algorithm feeds off audience participation and sharing.

What’s better than running an awesome contest on Pinterest, Twitter, or Facebook?
How about running an awesome contest across all 3; Plus your website, mobile,
and print all at the same time?! How? Some third-party platforms (but not all!)
offer compatibility across the broadest range of channels. Make sure you ask
your vendor about functionality unique to each medium.

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5 Know The Rules

Obey Facebook
When it comes to social media contests, Facebook’s rules are airtight in outlining what you can
and cannot do. You can visit www.facebook.com/page_guidelines.php, to read the rules in full.
But in general, they break down to this:

- You can’t use Facebook functionality as a means for entering a contest
- Entrants must release Facebook of all liability
- You can’t notify winners via Facebook
- You must have your own entry form
- Promotions must be run through Apps on Facebook.com
- Violating any of these policies could lead to your Page getting shut down, and worst of all,
losing ALL of your fans. Don’t risk it! Partner with a trusted vendor to help navigate the rules.

Respect Pinterest
Pinterest is the chill to Facebook’s fire, looking at contest rules more like guidelines. Pinterest
asks you to simply provide users with clear rules on your company’s website. The request is really in your best interest. Since Pinterest is still a relatively
new social network, users can be vulnerable to illegitimate promotions. So in order to maximize the reach and effectiveness of your campaign, make
your rules clear!

General Restrictions
An expensive lawsuit will ruin any contest, no matter how successful the engagement level. Always check for up to date laws and consult a professional
legal counsel. Here are some general rules we found online:

- Except when explicitly outlawed, anyone must be able to enter.
- Official rules must be available at all times.
- If your target audience includes children under 13, make sure your sweepstakes is COPPA complaint.
- If they are under 18, parental or guardian permission is required to accept the prize.

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6 Set Safety Rails

How can you avoid hampering viral buzz but still control your “creative” audience? Allow
yourself to maintain control over the voting process. One way is to select the finalists of the
contest yourself, then open up voting. Just make sure to clearly communicate the nature of
the voting on the contest landing page. Expectations:
Some social media contests take a
Structuring the parameters of a photo contest is crucial. While you might want to get
less-than expected direction based
thousands of entries, it can bog things down, and it’s usually not a good idea to display all of
on an audiences… how shall we say
them on your contest entry page. Too many options can be overwhelming for spectators,
this? …creative interpretation of
taking away from a smooth user experience. The best practice is to allow people to easily
participation.
browse through entries from beginning to end. And if you really don’t want to cap the number
of entries, you can always manually rotate in photos as the contest progresses.
Just ask Mountain Dew, whose “Dub
The Dew” soda naming campaign was
hijacked by pranksters to list
less-than-tasteful flavor options.
Control System
When it comes to controlling your contest,
the key, as always, is to understand your
community. Give your fans the freedom
that you think they can handle.

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7 Launch & Promote

Finally, you’ve made it past planning and can launch your awesome contest. But how long should it run for? And how do you continue to drive traffic?
If you’re not sure, 4-6 weeks is a great starting point for the length of your entire contest! This will give you enough time to keep activity high while
retaining the interest of your fans. However, you also want to think about timing and promotional strategy for each phase of your contest:

Entry -
In general, try to allow 2-3 weeks in order to maximize entries without losing interest.
However, as always, it depends on the type of contest that you choose. The higher the
level of engagement, the more time you should allow your audience for entry. On the
promotion side, share interesting entries across your social channels. This will pump
up interest and drive additional participants to your contest landing page.

Voting -
Structure the length of the voting phase based on the parameters you’ve set for your
contest. Usually you’re going to want to allow at least two weeks, but this will often
overlap with entry time. Encourage participation across Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest
and other channels to maximize engagement.

Winner -
Make sure that you spend enough time publicizing the results of your contest. Your
winner will obviously love the exposure, but your audience as a whole will also
appreciate being kept in the loop. As always, share across all possible channels.

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Launch & Promote cont.

Manage your community
Make sure that you have someone dedicated to responding to questions and comments
across all of your social communities. It’s important to provide a positive experience for your How do you direct maximum
entire audience. Use email alerts and #hashtags to monitor your contest on all channels.
traffic to your contest? Try
If you’re worried about not receiving enough entries for a photo contest, feed it with a couple these strategies:
of your own submissions at first to get the ball rolling.
Send an email blast

Buy Facebook ads

Tweet and post on Facebook regularly

Program your #contesthashtag into
your contest apps twitter button
# Blog about your contest

Pin a photo linking to your
landing page

Include a link in your email signature

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8 Analyze & Engage

Numbers Matter
It’s critical to monitor key metrics throughout your entire contest.
Tweaking your strategy during each phase can be essential to a successful
campaign- and even more successful campaigns in the future.

Entry - Analyze your entry and impression levels. If the number of
impressions far outweighs the amount of entries, it’s a sign that you
should lower the barriers to entry of your contest.

Voting - Receiving lots of entries but seeing lackluster voting numbers?
Make sure your voting tab is providing an optimal user experience. It’s
possible that overcrowding in your contest gallery is the problem.

Winner - Ideally, the winning entry of your contest is a share worthy piece of content. If your viral lift (traffic due to socially shared links) isn’t as high as
you want, tweak the messaging of your share posts.

In life, we learn through experience. Your contest should be no different. Let it serve as a guide for all future marketing campaigns. Analyze what
worked, understand what didn’t work, and determine how you can improve the next time around. What’s the easiest way to measure the results of your
contest? Use a third-party application with a robust analytics system.

Sustain Conversation
A social media contest should never be a one-time deal. Once your contest has ended, make sure to announce your winner across all social channels.
Capitalize on this announcement— fans will be eager to know the winner—and tie in a teaser for an upcoming contest or other event that you want
to promote. If you collected permission to email entrants, send them an email. This can be a great way to ignite communication in a new channel, but
be clear about how often you plan to continue your email conversation.

Most importantly, don’t stop engaging with your audience, especially now that you’ve attracted a whole new set of eyes to your brand. Post videos and
photos, ask interesting questions to illicit replies, and share polls, personality tests, and trivia quizzes.

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What is SnapApp?

So you’ve made it through all 8 steps. Congrats! You now possess the know-how to launch and manage a contest that will engage your audience while
creating big buzz for your business. So how do you get started ASAP? Use an out-of-the-box contest solution, like SnapApp.

About SnapApp
SnapApp is a comprehensive marketing platform that facilitates high-value
audience interactions through the creation and distribution of
interactive quiz, sweepstakes & contest apps.

With the SnapApp platform, you create engaging contests, sweepstakes,
trivia, polls, personality quizzes and more that can be shared simultaneously
across the web, social and mobile. SnapApp’s interactive apps enable you to
monetize your social lead generation, increase traffic and stickiness to your
website, extend your reach through viral sharing activities and drive higher
engagement with your hard earned audience.

Contact us or learn more at www.snapapp.com

info@snapapp.com 1-617-923-0000 Facebook.com/ @snap_app
1-855-SNAP-APP SnapApp

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Resources

L2 Think Tank's Magazine, Digital IQ Index, July 2011 Running a social media contest
http://ukvideomarketing.com/running-a-social-media-contest/
Social Media, Web 2.0 And Internet Stats
http://thefuturebuzz.com/2009/01/12/social-media-web-20-interne 3 Tips for Effective Social Media Contests
t-numbers-stats/ http://mashable.com/2012/04/13/tips-effective-social-media-contests/
Magic Beans Case Study Boston Firm Launches B2B Social Media Contest
http://www.snapapp.com/case-studies/magic-beans http://socialmediab2b.com/2009/06/b2b-social-media-contest/
Panasonic Uses Pinterest to Power “Pin It to Win It” Photo How to Get The Most Out Of Your Social Media Contest
Contest http://thinkbigpartners.com/create-your-dream/463-how-to-get-the-
http://therealtimereport.com/2012/06/21/panasonic-uses-pinterest most-out-of-your-social-media-contest.html
-to-power-pin-it-to-win-it-photo-contest/ Martha Stewart Case Study
The Beginners Guide to Running a Social Media Contest http://www.snapapp.com/content/martha-stewart
http://unbounce.com/social-media/social-media-contests-for-begin 5 B2B Social Media Success Stories
ners/ http://blog.marketo.com/blog/2010/05/b2b-social-media-success.html
Facebook Marketing: Running Successful Sweepstakes & Social 18 Ways to Successfully Promote Your Facebook Sweepstakes or
Promotions Contest
http://info.snapapp.com/rs/pangeamedia/images/SnapApp%20Fac http://www.redjeweledmedia.com/blog/bid/74023/18-Ways-to-Succes
ebook%20Marketing_Sweeps%20and%20Social%20Promotions_4. sfully-Promote-Your-Facebook-Sweepstakes-or-Contest
12.pdf
Running a Social Media Contest? Use This Checklist
http://www.ragan.com/Main/Articles/Running_a_social_media_con
test_Use_this_checklist_44745.aspx
5 Tips to Launch a Contest on Pinterest
http://www.hellobloggerz.com/business/pinterest-contest-tips

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