How to Run an Amazing Facebook Sweepstakes or Contest in 8 steps

Posted on March 6, 2019 by Jim

A Facebook Contest or Sweepstakes is a great way to generate more ‘likes’ for your brand, engage your audience and spread brand awareness. And the good news is, it doesn’t have to be complicated! Follow these 8 Steps for Running a Successful Facebook Contest or Sweepstakes and watch the entries roll in!

Step 1: State Your Objectives

Having a clear idea of what you want to accomplish with your promotion will help determine if a contest or a sweepstakes is right for your brand. For example, if a high number of entries is your goal, an enter-to-win sweepstakes is probably going to receive the most entries, since they have the lowest barrier to entry on the social promotions spectrum.

Step 2: Outline The Promotion Details

This includes defining the timing of your campaign, how winners will be determined, what your prize is, and a variety of other considerations. For example: What information do you want to collect during registration? How do you want to use that information down the line for future marketing purposes?

Step 3: Follow The Rules

When running a Facebook promotion, it’s important to follow their guidelines. The team here at Votigo makes it a point to stay completely on top of all of Facebook’s rules and regulations, and we’ll always make sure that the campaigns that you run with us comply with them. In addition to Facebook’s promotional guidelines, you’ll also want to make sure that you create your own contest or sweepstakes rules and make sure that you are compliance with any relevant state or federal regulations. This is also something that Votigo can help with so just let us know if you need that!

Step 4: Design Graphics

Depending on your specific promotion and what time of features you are using, this can vary from a simple header graphic to more advanced design and customization. Either way, a few general rules will always apply: Make sure the imagery is eye-catching and inviting to the user and make sure it conveys the important details for the campaign like how to enter, what you can win, etc…

Step 5: Launch!

Once your promotion has been designed and set up, it’s time to launch! Make sure you test the user flow to make sure it’s exactly how you want it, and that it’s clear for users to understand. Once all of these pieces are in place, it’s time to publish your promotion to your Facebook page and start getting more engagement with your fans!

Step 6: Promote Your Campaign

You’ll want to actively promote your promotion in order to get entries and votes. Rely on all the channels you typically use to communicate with your audience (like social media, email newsletter etc…) in order to let them know about the campaign.

Step 7: Moderate and Manage

After your promotion has launched, you need to continue to manage it. This will depend on the format of your campaign but for example, if you’ve asked people to submit photos in order to enter, part of your campaign management will involve pre-screening these photos to make sure they’re appropriate. You’ll also want to keep an eye on entries to make sure that they are coming in steadily, and adjust your promotion efforts accordingly if needed.

Step 8: Use the Results

Running a Facebook contest or sweepstakes is a great way to get leads and quality user-generated content, so make sure you use your results! Nurture new leads with an email campaign or another promotion. Get creative with how you use any photos or videos that were collected during the campaign. Use the information you collect during registration to learn more about your audience and tailor future marketing activations based on this knowledge.

Ready to put these tips into practice with your next Facebook promotion? Click here to speak with an Account Representative today!

30 Simple Social Media Conversation Starters

Posted on October 21, 2015 by Jim

Now that you’ve worked hard on getting people to ‘like’ your Facebook page, Follow you on Twitter and Instagram through some exciting Facebook contests, social sweepstakes, a couple of interesting guest posts and other branding exercise, you may wake up realizing that you’re not quite sure how to keep all the fans that you now have. And this is just the beginning; the next road is a long one where you’ll need to keep talking to your audience while keeping them interested and engaged with your page.

Some say that social media is like your first date. You may be good at getting dates, but once you’ve actually get them, you’ll need to keep them from leaving… you..

There are many ways of keeping someone engaged with you, but one thing’s for sure – if you want to start a conversation, you’ll need to ask the question. Questions are great to get your audience to comment and contribute to the topic. That is why I’ve come up with a list of questions that you can ask your fans.

There are many different types of conversation starters. Here are a few conversation starters and how some great examples of using them.

Types of conversation starters.

1. Related to your industry

If you’ve targeted your fans correctly, then it is likely that your fans had liked your page to keep in touch with your industry. Keep your audience listening by sparking conversations about your main industry.

2. Random Questions

It’s the element of surprise – that brilliant randomness, those silly questions, and that Gangnam Style. Surprise your audience and spark their interest with some out of the world questions.

3. Personal Interest

Got an interest? A hobby? A game of football? A bite to eat? A pint to drink? Share personal interests by asking your audience what they do when they’re off-duty. Get up close and personal and build stronger relations with your audience by listening to they’re up to.

4. Helping others

Help your fellow community member by asking frequently asked questions and helping a fan out. Present questions to the rest of the audience and help solve their problems. It’s all about community spirit! Alternatively, you can help others by putting the spotlight on them and allowing them to share their page, blog post for others to check. Here is an example by Social @ Blogging Tracker

Below are 30 conversation starters for your social media accounts.

What’s your biggest question about ______. Our experts will answer them.
What’s your #1 goal to achieve in ______ this month/year?
What books are you reading this week?
What is your favorite _______ blogs?
What do you usually share on social media?
What is your biggest challenge in ________
What excites you every day?
What’s the best article you read today/ this week?
If you could be anywhere right now, where would you be?
My favorite thing about ____ is _____
What are your plans for the weekends?
What’s in your book list that everyone should read?
Where do you usually blog / tweet?
What are your biggest mistakes in ___ when you started?
If you could have dinner with anyone, who would it be?
What Facebook page would you like to share with us?
What song / quote describes YOU?
What’s number #1 on your to-do list today?
How often do you check your email / Facebook / Twitter?
How many times do you log into Facebook a day?
Who’s your biggest role model?
What is the first book that you read that changed your life?
Coffee or tea?
Chocolate or cheese cake? (one of my most responded questions, best answer was … chocolate cheese cake)
If you could re-invent something, what would it be?
What do you love most about _______ ?
When was the last time you were really nervous?
Whose life do you wish you could live for a day?
What film have you most enjoyed this year?
What’s the thing/page/ would you consider yourself a “number one fan” of?

Hope you like the list and don’t hesitate to share it out if you do. If this is something you would like more of, then I’ll come up with 30 questions every month in the hope that it will inspire you to post more questions and get your fans to engage with you.

What would you add to the list? Share them below and it will be in our next post.
Original post by Adam.

Facebook Sends a Message on the Importance of Promotions

Posted on August 28, 2013 by Jim

Yesterday Facebook announced that it has removed some restrictions about how businesses can run promotions (Contests and Sweepstakes) on Facebook. Previously, the Facebook Promotion Guidelines prohibited any promotion from using any native Facebook functionality like “posting on the Brand Page wall”, “commenting on posts”, “liking posts”, etc. And they required that businesses use a third party application provider like Votigo.

With the change promotions can now be administered on Page Timelines. For example, entries may be collected by posting to a page or commenting or liking a Page post.

By making these changes Facebook is affirming what we’ve always known. Promotions are an extremely important component of marketing for businesses of all sizes. Promotions offer a business the best way to acquire and engage new and existing customers. Facebook also recognized that a lot of small brands were ignoring their earlier guidelines anyway and hosting quick and dirty promotions on their Page Timelines anyway. Instead of having all of these pages be in violation of the earlier policy, which must have created an administrative nightmare for Facebook, they’ve acquiesced. However, businesses should still be aware of legal regulations from state to state and country to country.

We believe Facebook’s change to their policy will be good for those previously violating the Facebook Promotion Guidelines. They can sleep better at night, but the change will not replace promotion applications and the benefits they deliver.

What a Facebook Promotion Application can provide that running a promotion on your Page Timeline can’t:

– Like-gate (users must Like your page before they can enter)

– Branded solution

– Collection of custom user data and email address

– Easier to select and contact winners

– Email newsletter opt-in

– Multiple contest and sweepstakes formats: Photo contests, Video contests, Referral / Viral sweepstakes, Trivia sweepstakes and more.

– Exportable user data and voter reports

– Moderation and pre-screening entries

– Campaign Analytics

Let us know what you think about the new policy and/or if you have any questions about it.

We’re here to help!

– Team Votigo

Great Ways to Customize your Marketing Campaigns

Posted on April 4, 2013 by Danielle

Customizing your campaigns allows you to connect with your customers on a deeper level. It is a good idea to tailor your campaign to your own company, products, and creativity. One great way to customize your marketing campaigns and excite your fans is to offer prizes that are targeted to what your fans like, want, and need. These prizes should also be congruent with your company and your marketing goals.

Another way to customize your marketing campaigns is to leverage social applications to further engage users. These social apps can include:

Galleries for fan photos and videos, which allow users to look through other fan entries and see how other people are using your brand and products and engaging with your company. This is a great way to create a community among your fans and incorporate user-generated content into your marketing efforts.
Signup forms, which allow you to gather contact information from everyone who engages with your campaign. This is a great way to generate leads and new customers.
Surveys, which are a great way to find out more information about your fans and how they interact with your company, brand, or products.
Facebook apps, which allows you to customize your Facebook page with Facebook apps that encourage interaction or serve a marketing purpose and speak to your audience.
Marketing Pages, which allow you to display marketing messages or promotional graphics in a Facebook app. You can add a hyperlink to the images to direct users to your website.

It is important to customize the conversation you are having with your fans on social media and with the social conversation manager app it is simple to stay connected and to schedule posts and updates to your social media channels. Scheduled posts are a great way to customize your campaign and create a specific timetable for your content. You can also tailor your content by targeting your messages to specific locations and managing your global presence with language targeting.

These applications are a great way to individualize your promotions and marketing efforts. For more information on how to customize your campaigns contact us today!

Suzuki Sweepstakes: 50 Years of You

Posted on February 8, 2013 by Danielle

Engaging fans with a social promotion or sweepstakes is a great way to raise awareness for your brand and products. However, this is only one part in a larger campaign strategy to increase enthusiasm and sales. One great way to extend the promotion into a larger campaign is to include an initiative for your fans to engage with the brand and products in person. This in-person engagement can connect to your social promotion and will allow your fans to have a tangible experience with the products and services you are promoting.

Suzuki provides a great example of how to execute a promotion that incorporates in-person activity as an extension of their overall campaign. Suzuki is celebrating 50 years in the USA and is offering their fans great prizes for their support and to generate excitement for their next 50 years. Suzuki’s “50 Years of You” sweepstakes does a great job encouraging fans to visit their local dealer as well as to engage with Suzuki’s Facebook page and online sweepstakes. In order to enter for a chance to win a monthly prize, fans must go down to their local dealer to receive the monthly promo code. This is a great incentive for fans to physically visit with Suzuki on a monthly basis and to allow fans to see the prizes they could win in person. The sweepstakes homepage offers an easy way for users to find the Suzuki dealer that is closest to them. Suzuki’s great prizes include the latest motorcycles, ATV’s and accessories and the sweepstakes is offered every month for the rest of the year! Suzuki celebrates their fans by allowing users to enter to win every month. February’s lucky fan will win a 2013 RM-Z450!

Suzuki does a great job offering fans a way to interact with the products online and at the dealership. This interaction encourages fans to really get to know the products and the brand, creating a more personal experience and a lasting impact in the minds of your customers.

Introducing Photo Sweepstakes

Posted on February 4, 2013 by Shayna

It’s no secret that photos rule in the world of social media. According to Facebook, posts that include a photo album or picture generate about 180% or 120% more engagement, respectively. Photos create an emotional connection and help personalize your brand. They command more attention in the news feed, and they are a great way to showcase a lifestyle or put your customers on display.

Photo contests have long been used as a way to engage fans and get great quality content from your fans. Fan photos can be used in your marketing materials and on your social channels to help build your brand and tell your brand story.

Now – we’re pleased to introduce Photo Sweepstakes into our Standard DIY apps. Photo sweepstakes incorporate photo engagement in a low-barrier-to-entry giveaway. Unlike a photo contest, photo sweepstakes award a winner randomly, so entrants don’t need to worry about how their photo stacks up against the competition.

If you want to incorporate voting – you’ll want to use a Photo Contest app. But, if you’re looking for a simple giveaway that awards a random winner, a photo sweepstakes is the way to go.

You can create a photo sweepstakes by logging into your Votigo account, or by creating an account now. In addition to photo sweepstakes, we’ve also recently launched Twitter sweepstakes – which can also incorporate photos or video.

Get started now

New Viral Features & Apps: DIY Update

Posted on November 15, 2012 by Shayna

More than a year after launching self-service tools for social marketing on Facebook and mobile, we’re proud of the work we’ve done to package our innovative promotions, engagement apps and other tools into a cost-effective, DIY platform. These tools are being used by start-ups, international brands, small businesses and agencies alike. If we’ve learned one thing from working with these businesses, it is that there is an unending demand for more viral features, flexible tools and apps that help brands target and activate their growing social audiences.

Here are some of the latest and greatest additions to the Votigo self-service platform:

iFrame App: A flexible HTML app with a simple WYSIWYG editor that allows brands to customize a dynamic Facebook tab with multiple elements include text, images, video and other embeddable objects- including Votigo-powered promotions
Referral Incentive Sweepstakes: a simple, measurable feature that reinvents the classic promotion, making the sweepstakes app more viral by rewarding entrants who share the promotion with additional entries for each social friend they successfully refer to the sweepstakes
Promotions Messenger: A valued-added feature for scheduling posts about promotions to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ audiences. The posts are optimized for mobile users and customized with images and text
Mandarin: The 10th language available to self-service customers, who can now choose to launch promotions in English, Spanish, German, French, Portugese, Thai, Japanese, Korean, or Indonesian

Don’t take our word for it:

“Votigo’s new features are important for us in engaging our brand’s growing audience,” said Alexander Hagard Gronwall, Co-Founder and Marketing Director of Pambox, a Thailand-based beauty sample subscription service that recently ran a giveaway promotion in Thai that also tied in the L’Occitane brand. “For a start-up, it is critical for us to be able to target our audience right down to their language preferences. The viral features are a bonus.”

“In launching our new travel goods web retail brand GoInStyle.com, we needed a way to quickly boast the number of engaged fans in our Facebook audience,” says Kristi Daeda, Internet Marketing Manager of GoInStyle.com. “We devised a weekly giveaway with all the elements- from great prizes to low barriers to entry. The referral feature was critical, though, in getting our new-but-growing audience to share the promotion with other friends and likely potential customers.”

Finish Strong: Launch a Q4 Promotion!

Posted on October 29, 2012 by Shayna

If you want to get more Facebook likes and generate social media buzz, a contest or sweepstakes is a great way to accomplish your goals. With 2012 rapidly coming to a close, a fourth quarter promotion can help you end the year on a high note and build momentum for 2013.

As the holidays are fast approaching, now is the perfect time to get your audience engaged with your brand to ensure you are top of mind during the peak shopping season. A sweepstakes can help build awareness of your brand or a specific product you’d like to promote and with our new viral referral incentive you can ensure your promotion has the built-in features that make it easy for people to share with their friends. Right now is also a great time for a contest, as photos and stories are an integral part of the holiday season.

Remember to keep your promotion easy to enter, offer a great prize and keep it all relevant to your brand and your audience. Here are some of our favorite holiday promotions from previous seasons to help inspire you.

Brooks Running created a fun and quirky holiday promotion that asked fans to upload awkward family photos for a chance to win.

: Champs Sports Scratch and Win promotion engaged fans during the peak holiday season

Pier 39 ran a sweepstakes to promote their Christmas tree lighting ceremony.

Homage jewelry asked fans to upload a Christmas photo for their chance to win a beautiful necklace during the holiday season.

Need help getting started? Download our free guide to Facebook contests & sweepstakes.

We’re also giving away a free month of UNLIMITED promotions to help you grow and engage your audience. Just answer a few questions for your chance to win!

PetSmart Halloween Photo Contest

Posted on October 15, 2012 by Danielle

Halloween is near and what better way to celebrate than to run a Halloween promotion! Holidays are a great time to run a promotion and engage your fans!

To kick off the Halloween season, PetSmart launched their Monster Cute Photo Contest powered by GREENIES^®encouraging fans to submit a photo of their pet to the Facebook photo contest.

Votigo created a custom Facebook contest app that requires users to “like” the page before entering. The app allows fans to easily upload, browse, and vote on entries of the cutest and scariest pets.

Fans are asked to submit a photo of their pet in one of the 5 categories by October 21st:

Scariest
Cutest
Healthiest Smile powered by GREENIES^®
Rockstar Pets
Funniest

PetSmart is rewarding those who engage with the Facebook contest by sending each entrant a coupon to save on GREENIES^®dental chews. This is a great way to show appreciation to fans!

The final Grand Prize winner will receive $10,000, a year supply of GREENIES^®Dental Chews, and a PetSmart treat bag loaded with Halloween toys. PetSmart will also choose 25 runner up winners who will receive a PetSmart gift card and GREENIES^®Dental Chews. Weekly winners will be chosen, with a total of 6 winners who will receive a $50 PetSmart gift card. PeSmart does a great job keeping the prizes relevant to the brand and the Halloween theme of the contest.

For more inspiration and promotion ideas, follow @votigo on Twitter and follow the #bestofvotigo hashtag.

Viral Social Sweepstakes: Simple Fan Activation

Posted on October 9, 2012 by Jeff

Votigo’s basic sweeps app now has a viral referral feature that makes this simple promotion app even more useful in reaching your social marketing goals.

So…what are the goals of your social marketing? Most likely they go something like:

Engage your fans on all social channels: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, and where ever they are
Find new fans- especially through viral influence from your current ones
Reward your fans for their attention
Improve their awareness of your brand, your products and offerings
And ultimately, convert social fans into customers!

That’s a tall order, and it takes a consistent, always-on effort to achieve it. There are no shortcuts.

But if you want to take action today toward these goals, the single most-effective thing you can do is to run a Facebook Sweepstakes, and ask your fans to share it on Facebook, Twitter, email and all relevant channels.

With low barriers to entry, an incentive to share and spread the word, and simple set up, social giveaways are still one of the most effective ways to engage and grow your audience and collect email addresses for future marketing.

Even though we’ve expanded the capabilities of our social marketing platform, we continue to focus on our promotions apps, adding features and flexibility that make them more viral and better for engaging your audience. We believe promotions are the core for engaging your audience.

A sweeps might be the simplest type of promotion to launch. Here are a few other reasons to consider a Sweeps:

Easy For You: If you have a prize, simple rules, and a header graphic, you can set up a sweeps in minutes

Easy For Them: Sweeps have the lowest barriers to entry. You’re asking very little of your audience…although you should take advantage of the opportunity to ask them Custom Registration questions to gain feedback or further demographic data

Great Ice Breaker: Not really engaging your fans, or struggling to find things to Post or Tweet about? A sweeps gives you a natural hook and something to post about

Viral: Sweepstakes aren’t naturally viral, but with Referral Incentive feature like the one we just added to our basic sweeps, participants now have a reason to share your branded sweeps with their friends: every entry they refer automatically gains them an additional entry

Cross Channel: It’s really easy to create a Facebook Sweepstakes that is also mobile-optimized, embedded onto your website or blog, and shared from Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and your other key channels. From some premium work, you can easily integrate Instagram and other social channels, too

Like-Gated: Votigo’s basic sweeps include this Facebook sweeps option; we still see it as the simplest way to expand your Facebook audience

A Gateway to Activation: As an ice breaker, it’s natural to follow a short giveaway with more elaborate social promotions, like a user-generated photo contest. Meanwhile, you can directly activate anyone who enters your sweeps by sending them a coupon, sneak preview, invitation or whatever else will help you convert social fans as customers

Sweepstakes have been a marketing staple for decades. It’s no surprise they’re equally effective on social media. So as you expand your always-on social marketing strategy, plan more elaborate campaigns and increase your analysis of social marketing ROI, don’t forget this staple of social activation.

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Category Archives: Facebook