How to run a Successful Facebook Contest

How to run a successful Facebook Contest

Every business that has a Facebook page wants to have thousands of likes! Getting them for free is..impossible! Obtaining likes through advertising is possible but..it can be expensive. Contests on the other hand can be equally effective and not that expensive!

If you want to run a Facebook contest and you want to succeed, here are some of the tips:

• Know your objectives
  

  What kind of objective you are looking for? Looking for a traffic? Want engagement? Collect email addresses or you just want more likes by the end of your campaign? All these will determine how you will run your contest.

•  Give a prize that people want
  

  Make sure your prize it is relevant. People tend to be attracted by prizes and even if they are not interested in your business they will be there just for the prize. A common phenomenon, is give away an iPad as a prize. Who doesn’t want an iPad for free? Even if people are not interested in your services, they will just hit and share the post just for the prize. But, what you need to think, is not getting the likes. What about the engagement rate?

•  Stick to the rules

  Make sure you follow Facebook’s rules. A lot of business run ‘Like and Share’ contests where users are required to like a post and share it on their wall by way of entry. This is of course something against Facebook’s promotional guidelines. What you can do is to promote by ‘Comment and Like’ here you can have the same amount of engagement without breaking the rules. In the end of the day, either way the post will show on others people wall if users comment and like a post.

• How you will run Facebook Contest?
  

  There are different types of Facebook contest. Decide if you will run a status updates, or if people will need to watch a video and answer a question. There is also another type of contest where a third-party app where you can ask questions and expecting the right answer from users.

• Plan in advance
  

  If you are running a contest around a certain event you may want to organise your graphics. This needs time and if you plan well in advance you will not have to worry about it. There many business that do not take seriously their marketing efforts and they are on the last-minute thought.

• Choose a time frame
  

  When running a contest, it’s good to let people know how long they have to enter. Let your audience know if this will keep few days or weeks.

•  Terms & Conditions
  

  It is well worth mentioning, that there are business that they run contest without using Terms & Conditions. Think about if you are having a prize and the winners wants to the equivalent cash instead of the prize. What would you do? If you don’t have this somewhere saying that is not allowed then how you can say it isn’t? When share your contest, let them know about your Ts&Cs and have them somewhere where you will make sure you are cover.

•  Get creative
  

  If you want your contest to look good and something to stand out make sure you invest time to create some banners, graphics. Using website like Canva, you can get something that looks good and quickly! They have also free banners where you can just edit or create your own from scratch!

• Share details of the winner afterwards
  

  To ensure people believe that you actually giving away something make sure that the winner agrees to have his/her name and a photo shared on you page after the contest is over. Simply add this on your Terms and Conditions!

If you run a Facebook contest let us know any other tips do you have to share!