Facebook Contests – Using Them to Expand Your Audience

The concept of contests through social media to build business has been around for a long time. The murky part is exactly how you leverage the contests to work effectively for your business. Getting people to participate is no problem.

With that in mind, it is worth discussing the mechanism of action of Facebook contests and how they can be used most effectively. Another important thing to discuss is what is true and what is false about contests and potential difficulties that you might run into when it comes to Facebook contests.

 Contest versus sweepstakes

The first thing that you need to decide if you are going to go in that direction is whether you want to offer a contest or a sweepstake. If you are simply giving something away as a result of a contestant making very little effort to win what you are giving away, it is a sweepstake. If on the other hand, you are having contestants compete against each other, it is a contest. There are applications (apps) that can assist you in running contests. You should do some research and check out the different apps that are specifically designed for Facebook. It will make your work when it comes to setting up your contest much easier and smoother. The apps will give you a list of what you can and can’t do when running a Facebook contest. The guidelines are very important and you  have a responsibility to follow them religiously. It really is mandatory for you to read the guidelines before you begin.

Some of the more popular apps for contests and sweepstakes are Wildfire, Votigo, and an app platform that is made by Webtrends. If you are going to run a contest or sweepstake, you need to really make it exciting and appealing to other people. Unfortunately, contests and sweepstakes seem to be going through a trend of not being as popular as they were once. The reason for that is most likely because there is so much that is now offered that getting involved in a contest or sweepstake is no longer a new thing. People will become disinterested quickly if they try to enter contests a few times and continue to not win anything, There are websites on the Internet that are specifically dedicated to finding contests and sweepstakes and with the high volume of people who participate, the traffic that you are getting may not be of the highest quality.

Choose the prize carefully

Before you choose the prize that you will award to the winner or winners of  your contest or sweepstake, make sure that it is extremely relevant to your business and your brand. You don’t want to give away a generic prize (such as an iPod or iPad, for example). You want the winners to think about your business every time they use the prize. There is a lot of potential value in running a contest because it will cause at least some of the people with whom you interact through the contest to build a relationship with you and your business and hopefully, they will become loyal customers at some point in the future.

How businesses are using Facebook for contests

There are many different ways in which businesses are using contests to increase their brand awareness and other aspects of their business. Different types of contests produce different results. For instance, sweepstakes generally produce less audience engagement than other contests where there is actually some effort and thought that needs to go into reaching for the prize. This also ties into the viral aspect of the contest. If there is high engagement from others, there will also be a much greater chance that the contest will go viral.

Conclusion

There are several good reasons for using contests as a part of your social media marketing campaign. First of all, contests are an excellent way to increase your fan base. Second, contests give you the opportunity to engage your audience. Third, contests give the audience members the ability to help you to market (by telling their friends, who tell their friends, etc). Fourth, you can acquire data from contests (names, addresses, Email addresses, etc). Contests and sweepstakes are a great tool that will help you to increase business and allow you to connect with even more people online.

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