You have a Facebook page for your business. You know how to attract followers, post status updates, share photos and create polls. But are you leveraging Facebook’s contest feature? Everyone loves a good contest! Who wouldn’t want to win a free product or couple-hundred dollar gift card? Give your followers the chance to win something while getting your businesses’ name out there even more.
Why run a contest?
1) Contests help you promote your brand because word travels fast
2) Contests appeal to peoples’ competitive nature
3) Contests drive traffic to websites
4) Contests help build community
Here are some suggestions for your Facebook contest:
Run a photo contest – have followers post photos of themselves with your product and choose your favorite or most creative.
Play mind tricks – Do a word jumble, post a photo and ask followers where it was taken or ask trivia questions.
Ask for tips – Ask followers for their tips and see which one has the most unique comments or “likes.” For example, if you’re trying to up your green efforts, ask followers how they conserve energy and “go green” themselves.
Reward “likes” – To enter your contest, have followers “like” your page and then choose the lucky winner at random.
It’s important to remember that Facebook does have specific guidelines and rules about running contests. You must use a 3rd party service in order to launch a contest through your Facebook page. If you risk not using one of these services and running the contest on your own, you also risk losing your fan page. So here’s a few resources you can use to launch your first contest:
1. Wildfire
2. Woobox
3. North Social
Share your thoughts with us…What best practices have you learned from running contests in your social media communities?