Facebook Like Contests may be an immense success or may end up falling flat on their face. A few wrong moves, and Facebook could declare your contest invalid, or block your account completely. If you don’t promote your contest right, you may not be able to generate any buzz around your Facebook page, thus defeating its very purpose.
So, the question is how do you conduct a contest to generate a genuine buzz and get Likes without flouting Facebook’s rules. The following are the top 5 strategies.
1. Use a Third-Party Application
Facebook decrees that for any promotions via contests, a third-party application has to be used; users would then be required to operate inside your page to be eligible for contests.
There are several applications such as Wildfire and Binkd that can be used for this purpose. However, if you do not know how to work these apps, hire a professional programmer to do it for you – your work will be done in minutes.
2. Do Not Have a ‘Wall Contest’
Many companies use their Page Walls’ to hold contests where participants are expected to simply Like/Comment on content that is posted. Facebook, though, does not approve of such actions and has, in fact, penalized bigwigs like Pizza Hut and Cadbury for the same.
Therefore, to stay out of trouble and honor Facebook’s terms of usage, conduct contests on a separate tab or shortcut, or best of all, using an application, as recommended above.
3. Promote Away!
Just having a contest and inviting a few people to participate in it is not enough. For a contest to be a success, you need to spread the word and reach the widest audience base possible.
A great way to do this is explore cross-promotion opportunities with businesses in associated but complimentary niche areas. For example, let’s say you own a Parenting blog, you could explore cross promotion opportunities with businesses that sell baby care products, kids apparel, nursery accessories, etc. You could give away your promotion partner’s product as the prize, thus giving them an incentive to promote your contest too.
Other than this, you could share information or links to the contest through your own as well as your promotion partner’s blog.
To give maximum visibility to your contest, you must also direct people from other social networks to the contest by promoting it on those pages.
If you don’t have a significant fan-following on Facebook, it may be a good idea to invest in Facebook advertising as well.
4. Provide Proper Instructions
Facebook Like Contests can become extremely unmanageable if proper instructions are not provided to the participants. If the guidelines are unclear, either people will perform tasks incorrectly or write individual posts to clarify their doubts.
Many, in fact, avoid such contests because they detest the confusion and lack of clarity therein.
The best means to overcome this is to give proper guidelines and also specify the Terms and Conditions in the Application itself.
5. Offer Good Prizes
The prize you offer should be in accordance with your product or the idea you would like to get associated with. The prize doesn't always have to be your own product or service, but it should be something that adds to or promotes your brand message.
For example, a mineral water company may want its brand to be associated with health and sports. If such a company were to conduct a contest, it could offer tickets to an ongoing sporting event as the prize.
Having said that, it’s important to keep in mind that those people who participate for a casual shot at winning may bring you any direct business. Therefore, by having suitable prizes, you can ensure that the target audience receives something that furthers your cause as well, which is, promotion of a particular product or service.
Said on Mar 10, 2013 by Karan -
Said on Mar 12, 2013 by Vishal -
Said on Mar 12, 2013 by Vishal -