Modern Insider – Online Marketing Blog

Study social users and you’ll immediately find that what they’re looking to be engaged with through interesting content, events, photos and yes, contests. Contesting has long been used by brands looking to participate in user based communities as it offers a simple way to build discussion and potentially even capture customer data.

Of course with thousands of brands competing for the attention of the hundreds of millions of social users it’s easy to get lost in the dust, or even worse, turn a good program into a disaster with a logistical problem. So before you start in on a contest of your own here are 5 tips to get you going in the right direction.

1. Contest frequency is as important as prize value.

While users love the big prizes these are your fans and they want to participate. Brands that understand this successfully capture a lot of attention and day to day growth by giving away something here and there rather than waiting months to do all inclusive, super expensive giveaways.

Alternate between the big giveaways and the simple ones. Depending on your brand a t-shirt can get nearly as much response as a premium product. And the more often you give, the more people look.

In the example above Hot Topic drives great fan response and keeps people logged in by handing out movie tickets and other small ticket items one at a time, randomly.

2. Keep your contest on facebook, use apps to extend it.

While it’s easy, and generally a good idea, to do a simple video, photo or even “like” contest you want people giving something back to you and you don’t want to force them to leave your page to do so (that would reduce the interest and buzz). Whether it’s a few pieces of data, a survey response or virally spreading the giveaway, the basic contests are limited and you have to go jump outside the box to get richer tools.

Wildfire is one of the more popular apps offering a variety of features from basic data capture through to a fully co-branded sharable experience. This comes at a cost but if you’re expecting a larger response you want the email optins, the fans, the branding space.

Just don’t try to force people through long forms or to share the contest, never works in the long term.

3. Spell out all the details in your head & then to the user.

Individually people tend to be forgiving but in mass they can be easily upset and downright underhanded. You want your contest to be airtight so everyone has a good experience… fans take these things very seriously and confusion leads to disgruntled response, emails and other unneeded negatives. Keep it all positive and airtight so no one feels cheated in the end…

To be sure you’re got think your contest through at length yourself and then share it with a half dozen co-workers to see what they think.

• Is it easy to enter? If so, is it easy to game?
• Is there a way to figure out who entered? If not how will you get an answer?
• Do people know who can enter and who cant?
• Are the rules easily found to clarify things? Are they broad enough to cover an issue? Fraud? Cheating?
• Do you have a way to contact the winner? That is an important one.

4. Take advantage of profile targeting & avoid upset users.

Since contests are rarely open to, or intended for everyone when it comes to ads or a post to your wall this feature is truly invaluable in facebook contests.

Use profile targeting (country / demographics) wisely and you can minimize upset fans who are not able to enter. This becomes essential as your page grows from country specific to global and fans feel left out.

You can also accelerate your growth finding well suited users and driving them over to your page. And since you’re fan page is where the contest takes place people can fan you in the same ad – double win.

5. Don’t “set it and forget it”

Your first few contests will have hiccups and users always have issues. Don’t leave your fans hanging and guessing… jump in and help. This not only solves problems but enables user to user assistance as fans find a solution and share it with others. There’s nothing worse than turning your computer on after a long weekend to discover the great promotion you did failed. Your users will be on 24×7, don’t forget that.

And remember to always K.I.S.S. (Keep it simple, stupid). Just like no one reads an entire web pages, users get bored with long posts, want to find a simple method and want a simple answer.

This is the golden rule of just about anything in social but even more so in contests. People’s attention spans online are short, as is their willingness to put up with barriers or issues. When you want to get people involved you want to get a lot involved and the easier it is for everyone to participate the more will.

As a final suggestion, never forget about the wall – that’s the most valuable real estate in social marketing and where you should be aiming to get. So in every giveaway be sure you’re aware of how your promo can, or can’t get you in that space.

This Valentine’s Day I thanks to some [ok, a few hundred] timely emails I discovered a lot about myself. I also found that with more than 20 messages from a single company in two weeks is too much even for me to get through and actually read so who knows what other details I may have skipped over.

First I found out that it’s time for me to propose thanks To Robbins Brothers.

Then I found out this special someone works in an office thanks to ProFlowers.

This was news to me but all seemed slightly ok until Victoria’s Secret told me there was a new way for me to love my own body in time for Valentine’s Day, with a bra. I guess only women end up on their mailing list.

Tiffany’s also shot over a confusing one when they offered to help me get a gift for “him” although they were ambiguous about who exactly “he” was.

And of course we can’t forget the anniversary gifts, computer parts and other suggestions sent out by all my other favorite retailers, most of which had much less impactful insights into my world.

Now I’m not suggesting any of these companies should have held back on their campaigns, in fact I’d like to I commend them on trying a diverse set of campaign messages and using some great creative to drive the sale. And these campaigns aren’t much different from what we see on TV, hear about in radio spots and are bombarded with in every other channel possible. What’s different is the opportunity of the internet – with a little interaction, some micro-profiling or even just a fun email offer Robbins Brothers could know my relationship status, Pro Flowers could be sure the name they keep suggesting a gift for is still a part of my life and Victoria’s Secret could become aware of my gender.

Personalization isn’t only about stopping awkward emails; it’s also a conversion steroid. Just think about it – if 1-800-Flowers knew who my mom was (they’ve shipped to her), what the status of my current relationship is, and that I’m more of the random flowers type than the once a year guy they could have slaughtered all their competition with some targeted and really useful gift suggestions instead of 23 different offers over 14 days. Getting accurate consumer data is of course a fine line as you don’t want to scare people off but as the world becomes increasingly digital the opportunity for a little profiling exists, it just needs to be used.

20 of the emails I got from 1800Flowers in just 2 weeks. The shocker: This isn't everything.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to update my family on some recent insights.

Following on my post earlier this week about showing fan posts on the main part of your facebook site I’ve been talking with other Fan Page admins about how they are building community on facebook rather than simply creating a messaging platform. Here’s a few tips from the successful facebook communities out there:

1. Don’t only rely on your posts for updates, respond. Many brands have resorted to simply posting occassional updates to their fan page and do nothing to nurture or even pay attention to the comments that come in. As a result all the dialogue is one way and doesn’t drive any reason for a user to engage.

Disney's fan page has millions of members but none can share photos

An unofficial Disney page allows photos and has hundreds from fans

2. Don’t be afraid to help users. Following on point 2, your users won’t always post good stories or photos, customer support issues come up too. Bring your support team in, or just take the action and respond yourself — this is a great way to show people that you’re involved & responsive which helps draw out advocates to get involved in any issue that may be coming up.

3. Make users know they can contribute. Facebook offers so many tools for users to participate but to “control” content many brands shut these down. As a result users may not know what they can do. Encourage fan photos, repost your favorite items, share videos that aren’t from the brand and always remind people that they can contribute. They will.

4. Give the users something to participate in. In a recent survey I found that on multiple fan pages the bulk of users were there looking for promotions and contests and if that’s what you want that’s exactly what you should deliver. Daily giveaways aren’t needed but if people know they have a shot at getting something they will be much more likely to keep following.

The Ahwahnee hotel in Yosemite is giving away a stay by having fans submit their memory / story

5. Reward your advocates. As with any community there will always be members who post more, who help others and who do lots of the lifting for you. Be sure you acknowledge these helpful members and don’t be afraid to send out a product sample here and there to say thanks, $10 in cost goes a long, long way.

The idea of your facebook fan page should always be to drive interaction as that’s what gets people excited, gets them to share content and starts building the network effect so as you build your page think about what users are doing now and how you can bring them into the fold at every step.

Comscore’s announcement of over 110 million unique visitors to Facebook in December should have been enough to convince any brand not living under a rock that it’s time to be on the platform and be there in a big way. Still Facebook is a relatively new channel for businesses and it can be difficult deciding just how involved to get.

One trend I’m still noticing is brands hiding their fan comments by using the “Posts by Page” option. This strikes me as a interesting decision to make in a world where you’re trying to engage the individual rather than just throw messages at them.

Choosing to put your fan comments on the second page has upsides; it lets you control the initial impression someone gets when they come to your page or wall and it lets people find your old posts and announcements much quicker.

But when it’s all said and done isn’t your page about engagement first and old content as an afterthought? Letting fans post to the main page gives your visitors something to immediately be involved in even if you haven’t made a post in a few days. It keeps things exciting and turns your page from a billboard of updates into community of individual discussions. If you’re doing things well and responding back on inquiries and posts it also gives your brand a chance to show that you are using social in an effective way – if your not, well, then perhaps you should be hiding your fan’s pleas for help a little more.

I’d like to hear what others think – are you enabling fan posts on the main wall or not? And why?