Social media contests and giveaways can be a super strategy to ignite brand awareness. This kind of contest encourages follower engagement, highlights brand persona, and increases brand awareness in a dynamic and interactive way. When done well, contests rapidly bolster company growth in cost-effective approaches. If this concept is new to you, here’s some information to get you started!
Contest Type
“What kind of contest is best for my brand?” There are multiple social media contests and each one is tailored to affect distinctive aspects of businesses. The most effective one for your brand is dependent upon your end goal; for example, if you want to deepen relationships with your existing followers, a “caption contest” can be beneficial. If you want to increase your numbers of followers, a “tag your friend in the comments” helps to gain growth. There are many more contest options—try noticing those that stand out to you on social media feed, and maybe that’s the one for your brand.
Prizes
Which prizes are best? When selecting prizes, it is important to select something that supports brand growth. If it’s an apparel brand, promote a new product or one that is underperforming and should be getting more love than is it. If the company does not produce its own products, choose a prize that you truly believe in and maybe even collaborate with that business. As long as your prize is chosen intentionally, your followers will be encouraged by your energy.
It’s worth noting that a common faux pas with social media contests is follow-through. Too often, businesses start a contest with clear rules, prizes, and end dates, but once those final dates come to pass, the account goes silent. This happens for many reasons ranging from oversight to disappointment because the contest did not gain the traction desired. Though the inactivity can feel discouraging, lack of follow through harm your brand image while staying on course and announcing a winner increases traction and brand credibility in the long term.
Timeline
What is giveaway timeline? A timeline is the time duration you provide to your audience. To choose a timeline that is best for your brand’s purpose, consider the size of your prize and the interaction level of your audience. If a prize is on the larger side, it’s best to give yourself four to six weeks to build momentum and engagement.
If your gift is time sensitive or seasonal, it’s best to base your timeline on the most impactful time.
Choosing a Winner
How do you choose a winner? We recommend random selection since it’s the most common and fair practice when choosing a winner. This technique encourages a broader group of people to participate and once again builds trust in your brand. And it’d fun!
Stay Interactive
As your giveaway deadline gets closer, harness the energy you worked to build. Spend some time interacting with followers through comments, engaging stories and reels. Keep them wanting to stay connected after the contest.
Reflect and Strategize
At the conclusion of the contest, it’s beneficial to reflect on the process and outcome. These insights are super helpful for planning future contests since the ultimate goal is to have enough positive impact to make facilitating the contest worth it. For example, ask yourself these five simple questions:
1. “Did I gain followers or interaction with my audience?”
2. “Was my giveaway prize impactful to my brand?”
3. “Was the facilitation of this giveaway easy?”
4. “Did this giveaway foster growth of my brand after the contest?
5. “What would I do differently if I did this again?”
The first step to examining if your contest fostered growth is by determining if your brand gained more traction on social media. Traction could mean more followers, shares, views, or simply communication with your audience. For this, it can be helpful to get a goal of how many followers you want to gain or what level of interaction you want, etc. To make sure you’re reaching that.
Secondly, it is good to gauge if the prize sparked enough excitement in the participates. This is the largest expense, and mostly the only expense, so make the time to look over this section. When examining it, identify if it was well match for your audience, if the expense of the prize was worth it, and why it was the correct prize (if that is the case).
To run a successful business or brand, it is important to operate from a place of calm and confidence; same goes for your giveaway. Giveaways are a simple way to boost your brand with minimal effort, and if the process continue to feel like that while it was underway, great! However, if the process felt chaotic or stress educing, it is completely okay to do only one giveaway for your brand.
The first step of brand growth, as stated before, is the initial effect during the contest, however the second part to that is just as vital. Creating a contest that can continuously produce growth in a company, even after the giveaway is completed, is what can truly affect your brand in positive ways. Making a giveaway super memorable and playful can spark memories in your audience that will continue to keep attention alive.
Lastly, when every aspect of your giveaway has been reflected on, ask yourself “What would I do defiantly next time?” Whether your felt your timeline was rushed, or your prize did not have impact on your audience, simply isolate what you would change. The awesome thing about this boosting concept
In conclusion, we highly recommend creating a contest to highlight your brand and stimulate growth and brand awareness. Have fun with it, think outside of the box and you just might find that your goals can be met with easy and fun!
Commentaires