Increasing Traffic Through Facebook Contests and Sweepstakes

Contests are a very important and effective part of Facebook. People love contests; they love to respond and they love to play. They also love to get something either for free or without having made much effort at all.

There are many different Facebook contests and there is basic information that people should know before they start to get involved. Also, there is a lot of inaccurate information related to Facebook contests and people should have a clear understanding of that as well. If a contest or sweepstake is managed appropriately, very valuable engagement can occur between you as the business owner and your followers.

Contests versus sweepstakes

The first thing that you need to understand is that the definitions of contests and sweepstakes are not interchangeable.

Sweepstakes

In a sweepstake, there is no competition among contestants. The contestants need to do something in order to get a prize. There is generally very little challenge in order to win a sweepstake. Choosing the winner of the sweepstakes is generally done randomly.

Contests

In a contest, your contestants are generally competing against each other for the prize. Sometimes, the contest will be more challenging at some times than other times. Both contests and sweepstakes are excellent tools to entice people to interact with you and the greater the number of people who are drawn to your website (or some other aspect of your web presence), the greater your chances of increasing traffic.

If you want to know how to set up contests through Facebook, there are several sources of information that you can use. There are applications that are specifically designed to help you to conduct a contest. Before you actually choose a contest, you should check out all of the tools that can help you to do that and then you will be able to decide which ones work best for your purposes. Using one of the contest tools will make it so much easier for you. Facebook has several items that they allow and several that they don’t allow and if you use a tool that is specifically designed to create a contest or sweepstake on Facebook, you will be made well aware of what you are allowed and not allowed to do. For example, it may very well be that the person on the other end will be required to “like” the page or check in somewhere before they can actually proceed with the contest or sweepstake.

Do your homework

Before you begin to have a contest or sweepstake on your Facebook page, you need to identify the available contests and sweepstakes. There are several websites that are totally dedicated to finding all of the contests and sweepstakes. You will most likely have to weed through a great deal of refuse before you find the contest jewels so you will need a lot of time in the beginning and quite a bit of patience. When you finally get to the point of offering an actual contest or sweepstake, you will have chosen so carefully that you are bound to be successful with it.

Make sure that your contest fits your branding

When you offer a contest or sweepstake, it should have some relevance to your branding and your offerings. The prize that you are offering, of course, must also be relevant to what you are selling. Whatever you happen to be offering as a prize, the contestants need to feel that their time was well spent on the contest or sweepstake.

Conclusion

Contests and sweepstakes are an extremely effective way to increase traffic to your website and to create a serious buzz for your business. You should proceed carefully when it comes to choosing the most appropriate contest or sweepstake so that you attract the most (and highest-quality) traffic. Always remember that contests and sweepstakes are not the appropriate forum for a hard sell. Just as you are always doing with other social media interactions, you are establishing new relationships and strengthening already-existing ones, which will eventually lead to your increasing the success of your business.

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