5 tips for creating a successful contest on Facebook

Posted on February 25, 2010 by teds

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.

Interjecting your brand into social conversations can help it grow

Posted on July 23, 2009 by teds

As a marketer the last thing any of us want to do is give up control of the brand messaging to other departments or the retail force but in this fast paced world of emerging media it may be a great idea to do just that. While thousands of companies are exploring the benefits of social media in forming relationships with customers who come to them, a few have started to interject at a deeper level engaging with consumers merely because they make a relevant comment.

Instead of waiting for people to come to them these organizations are sending their forces out into conversations to provide value and insights. While companies have been getting involved for years, the scale is changing. In just the past few weeks BestBuy announced their @Twelpforce program to empower an entire sales force to speak one to one with consumers. Hyatt has also made a similar move with @HyattConcierge to respond to travel questions from finding a restaurant to directions like any local Concierge would do. These companies are on the forefront of a powerful opportunity – the chance to influence customers with action, not offers.

This is not to say offer based programs have no value but rather that it’s limited by the interest in following the offers themselves. On the other hand when a company becomes engagement based it moves right into the conversation and whether it’s through twitter, Facebook or a topic based forum, there’s a tremendous opportunity to engage and provide value.

In a sense the entire concept of social solutions is a return to what retail once was. Companies are selling value not in terms of discounts or flashy displays but service. A polite answer to a question no one else solved. A helpful tip about where to go, what to do. It’s all welcomed and warranted so long as the source remains valuable. And while Twitter has introduced the concept on a mass scale it’s possible to extend into literally thousands of micro-communities where answers are always welcomed.

Of course engaging on a companywide level is not without risks and issues. Rogue employees can certainly harm a brand’s reputation intentionally or simply by accident. Plans can be leaked out prematurely and a whole list of other risks could certainly be written up if one was so inclined. But as with so many tactics the risk of inaction is even more worrisome. When a company fails to engage and fails to be open to communication the comments pile up, the questions go unanswered and the brand remains a faceless entity dedicated to selling only.

Opening the doors to mass interaction should be something every organization considers and evaluates. The opportunity for great results exists but must be thought through with careful attention to risks and potential challenges. BestBuy has done a solid job of foreseeing many of these issues and building a plan that works around them just as every organization should. After all the last thing any brand wants is its name getting associated with social spam or any other violations. But with a well executed effort there’s a wide open door to provide value that means something using the hands of people who know the customer and products best.

What if forums could be real time. What if they could be personalized…?

Posted on March 19, 2009 by teds

I’ve always been a believer in forums in fact I’d credit forums with making the internet what it is today. From the early BBS sites to the first threaded discussions, forums are the original community and remain an internet staple connecting millions of people across tens of thousands of topics. But while social media progresses towards a truly real-time environment, forums continue to trot along much like they always did. Sure there’s been advances… quicker posting, embedded photos and video media, more robust profiles, status updates, user derived groups, and other tools but ultimately forums remain about finding the right category and diving in. That’s not enough.

From where I sit everything in “new” social media is applicable to forums… it just hasn’t been prompted. What forums need is the same centralization other sites have been built around, what forums need is a feed to connect a user to their contributions, to their buddies and to the information that makes sense to them.

Whatever forum technology you have now or are thinking about bringing in down the road be sure it offers a portal, a way to collapse information and to get users from point A to the point B they want without surfing through dozens of sub-categories and hundreds of links. I’ve recently come up with my own interface for the vBulletin forum system which provides an a feed with elements including posts, profile updates, social group requests and much more. While it’s too early to talk about the impact it had, the initial comments from the sites using it and their users has been positive. I suspect those that really embrace taking their forum from a list of categories to a feed will see more activity and more visits as their users are able to sort through the noise quicker.

Let’s talk viral… getting your brand into an online community

Posted on June 24, 2008 by teds

If you run a big, or even just an older brand’s online presence you’ve probably had the “viral” conversation at least once and are downright sick of executives asking you how the company can get more “social”. While a lot of companies have put a great foot forward in building their own communities, this is a difficult proposition and even if it succeeds, it’s only going to reach a small slice of the viral world. The truth is, most user’s live on big networks (social networking sites) and niche sites (the independent forums, blogs, etc…) so let’s talk about some ways to reach out in someone else’s field.

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