When your campaign objective is to generate leads and keep growing your marketing communications database, Votigo’s Viral Sweepstakes are a no-brainer. And, the application comes fully loaded with all the functionality you need to ensure success. Here’s how it works:

How To Generate Leads with Viral Sweepstakes

Step 1: With sweeps having one of the lowest barriers to entry on the social promotions spectrum, your first wave of registrants will usually be high (as long as you promote the campaign and especially if you’re in a position to dangle a cool prize).

Step 2: Then, each registrant will receive an individual referral URL with their entry confirmation that they can share via email and all their social networks to spread the word (Great news for brand and campaign awareness).

Step 3: For each friend that registers through that unique referral URL, the original person will be rewarded with an additional entry.

Meanwhile your registrant list keeps growing. Easy, right?

Here are a few current examples of Viral Sweepstakes that are using Votigo’s technology:

Live Nation’s Dave Matthews Band Flyaway Sweepstakes

The wide variety of Votigo’s Social Promotions Apps are each designed to help you reach your campaign goals no matter what your specific KPI’s might be:

• Lead Generation
• Curate User Generated Content
• Spread Brand/Product Awareness

Toyota Corolla’s “Let’s Go” Concerts Sweepstakes

Music Today’s Stand Up To Cancer Sweepstakes

Let us know what you’re hoping to accomplish with your next social media promotion – We’d love to strategize with you. Click here to schedule a live demo with an Account Representative.

UGC Contests and Voting Apps are a great way to engage your customers, curate relevant content and create awareness on social media for your brand or cause.  Here are a couple recent examples from Le Meridien Hotels and Jewelers Mutual.

Le Méridien Hotels #FollowGrayContest

For the second year in a row, Le Meridien is inviting people on a visual journey to celebrate the work of fine art photographer Gray Malin.  Users can upload their entry via Instagram using the campaign hashtag #followgraycontest. They must also follow both the brand and the artist on Instagram in order to enter, in turn generating great fanbase growth. This Instagram Photo Contest Microsite was built on Votigo’s Enterprise Platform and features mobile responsive design, hashtag upload, content moderation and social sharing.

Jewelers Mutual Charity Voting App 

Jewelers Mutual recently launched a voting app to generate donations for three important charitable causes that the brand is passionate about. This Voting App is one of three of Votigo’s more popular Engagement Campaigns, featuring mobile responsive design, viral ‘share’ functionality, and leaderboard functionality to track donation activity.

Want to learn more about our products and services, or brainstorm with a member of our team on your next promotion? Click here to schedule a live demo with an Account Representative.

Facebook has grown from a social network to one of the most effective business tools. For the past few years, it has incorporated multiple ways to push your business forward. It promotes direct interaction with your customers; you are no longer a faceless, abstract company, but instead real people who communicate with their clients. Facebook has made the creation of a Company identity a must for everyone. Every time customers visit a new site, they look for the social networks to check and follow. Brand identification increases loyalty, attracts more clients and promotes rapid growth of a business.

Today, Facebook is a strong tool that can boost your revenue if you use it correctly. A wise strategy and open attitude to available options allow you to apply various marketing tools to run your business. With 1.7 billion of registered users and more than 1 billion daily users, Facebook is an incredibly valuable platform to lead a business with. Nevertheless, to attract even the smallest part of its audience, you need to understand how to optimize your strategy and make it work for you. In this article, we are going to cover 10 of the most useful marketing tips for running a business using Facebook. Get ready to experiment!

1.    It is not only about ads

Do you want to make advertisements work you for? Forget about posting only ad posts. Do you remember how TV ad blocks irritated you when you were watching your favorite TV series? The same is the case with social networks. Remember to mix your ad posts with informative and engaging content. Consider jokes, educational posts, hilarious tests and giveaways. You must understand the principles of successful blogging and your Facebook profile won’t look like just another advertisement page. A good idea is to choose informative content related to your business. For example, if you sell cosmetics, post makeup ideas. Do not forget about memes and gifs! They are suitable for any business.

2.    Create a content plan

If you’ve decided not to hire a specialist for your social media marketing efforts and do it by yourself, get ready to work hard. Social media marketing is not about randomly posted pics and reposts. It’s about creating a content plan that is effective for communicating with your target audience. Long-reads or video content? Give-an-advice section or funny pictures? What do your subscribers prefer? First, analyze their behavior. Then, put together a content development plan. It may be 2 informational post + 1 ad, 1 long read, 3 graphic materials + 2 ads, or something that suits your business. Remember that it is better to create a weekly plan for your SMM.

And do not forget about the tone of voice! The same tone of voice should be used in each post.

3.    Regularity is your friend

Another important thing about content plans is frequency. How frequently should you post your articles to be heard but not overwhelming? Again, it depends on various factors. Remember that you are not the only page followed by your subscribers. They have a constant flow of updates and new posts. And your aim is to join this flow and stand out among other please-like-it posts. If you have only one post per day, you have a smaller chance of getting likes and visits to your page even when the post is perfectly crafted. More posts allow you to appear several times in this flow. Besides, remember to post them in different times of day. This way, you can expect to get more viewers, and therefore, more visitors.

4.    Forget about hashtags

According to the statistics provided by the Facebook marketing team, posts with hashtags have less engagement. If you still want to use hashtags, do it wisely. First of all, stop hashtagging everything related or not to the subject of your post or your business. Secondly, create branded hashtags for your own business. Thirdly, be careful not to use too many hashtags in one post.

5.    Work on optimization

Clever optimization brings impressive results, especially when you use it along with SMM and the ad marketplace. You can customize your page and make your brand work for you. You can even create a new vision of your brand. Optimization requires some time, effort, and resources, and it works perfectly in the Facebook platform.

Keep driving traffic to your page. Lead ads are a good way to increase the number of your followers. You just need to define your target audience. If you still have some problems with that, set your bidding type and work upon the customization of the form fields.

6.     Create your community

Your business will never exist without your clients. Always keep that in mind. Facebook is a perfect platform for engaging clients into direct communication with you. However, to make this communication work for your business, you need to invest your efforts into it. To make a communication effective, consider the first 4 tips in this list.

If you just started marketing your business on Facebook, maybe you don’t have many followers yet. Forget about buying followers (although in some cases it may turn into a good venue). Facebook tools allow you to build your community quickly by looking for people who have an interest in your industry or business.

7.    Incorporate other social networks!

Marketing studies show that Facebook users are loyal to images posted via Instagram. The difference is quite impressive – 23%. So if you don’t have an Instagram account for your business, you should create one and use it for Facebook promotions. Besides, Instagram is just another platform than can enhance your business.

8.    Use both paid and organic tools

With Facebook, you can always experiment with ways to attract new clients. Paid tools are perfect for a new brand. But if your community is loyal to you, and you have a strong foundation for running a business in a social network, you can use more organic tools. Analyze the behavior of your visitors and use this research to influence  your Facebook activity. If you know your audience, you can work with organic tools.

9.    Define your objective

Before you start to run your marketing via Facebook, decide what exactly your goals and objectives are.  Perhaps you have several. You need to choose the one which is really important and which makes reaching of all other objectives possible. It is not an easy thing to do. You need to be careful and precise at setting an objective, as it will define your marketing strategy and the way your company is represented in social media.

10.    Make it simple!

Simplicity is your key to success. Remember, people like easy-reading posts, defined offers and straight-forward guidelines. If you want them to visit your sales page, the click-through URL should lead to that page, not to the main page. If you want them to join your site, the URL should lead to a registration form, not a contact us page.

Be clear with your call to action.  A verb is always better than a noun. If you want your clients to do something, ask them to do it clearly. Do not forget about motivation – it works perfectly for a call to action. Simple is the new black. Use it to make your business work.

This article was originally written by Kevin McNamara for the Heyo blog.

We’ve been saying for a while now that user-generated Contests and Sweepstakes are always reliable ways to engage your audience, drive lead generation, and curate relevant content for the brand while you’re at it. Nothing’s changed there, but if you’re looking to add a little variety to your promotional landscape and keep things interesting for your users, here are 3 promotion ideas to engage your audience.

1. #Hashtag Promotions

Hashtag campaigns let your community enter a contest or sweepstakes through their Instagram and Twitter accounts as well as directly from a Facebook page or Website. They are a great way to engage your audience, spread your promotion virally, allow users to participate from the platform they are most comfortable with, all while still creating a centralized hub to display the content. This contest from We Heart Local is a great example of how these kinds of promotions make it easy to enter from a variety of platforms, maximizing reach and engagement:

2. Voting App

Another great way to engage your audience is with Votigo’s Voting App. Voting Apps are a great way to invite your users into the conversation for your brand, without asking too much of them from a content creation standpoint.

Here are some thought-starters for how to bring them to life:

• Have your users vote on the name of something new that you’re introducing to the market.
• Invite people to vote for their favorite photo from among a brand selection for a chance to win a prize.
• Or, showcase your philanthropic side by asking people to vote for which charity should receive donations on your behalf, like Jewelers Mutual is doing right now in the example above.

Incentivize voter participation by offering a prize, add a leaderboard or include share functionality, and you’ll really see a spike in viral engagement!

3. Viral Sweepstakes

Viral sweepstakes offer the lowest barrier to entry and the highest number of potential entries.  These two factors combined make this a great promotion type to use if you want to engage your audience. When you add on the ability to reward referral behavior, participants then have a reason to share your branded promo with their social networks! Every entry they refer automatically gains them an additional entry.  The result? Cross channel fan engagement, new fan lead generation, and a whole lot of viral buzz. Check out this example from Fine Woodworking to see how it works:

Want to learn more about our products and services, or brainstorm with a member of our team on your next promotion? Click here to schedule a live demo with an Account Representative.

For any business to succeed in today’s crowded marketplace, they need to offer a product that’s new and exciting. However, sometimes even that’s not enough to bring the customers in. Use social media in new and interesting ways, though, and you’ll catch everyone’s attention. If you want to get noticed, try using these innovative tools to make your social media content the best it can be.

1. 1Checker

If you’re looking to improve your writing as a new business owner, 1Check is a highly effective yet affordable solution. Download the plugin for your machine of choice, and the tool will check over all of your writing for grammar mistakes and readability. Soon, your social media posts will improve without you having to pay a penny. What’s better to a cash strapped new business owner than a free resource?

2. Boom Essays: Custom Writing Service

As any business owner knows, the key to good management is delegation. As much as you want to be involved in all of your blog writing, you just don’t have time to carefully edit everything you write. However, you don’t want to post unpolished pieces online. This is where Boom Essays step in. Their writers can edit all of your pieces, making them high quality blog posts that you can post with pride.

3. Grammark

As the site says, it can take a teacher up to 15-30 minutes to grade just one paper, but this tool can do it in just 0.14 seconds. When you’re rushing to keep up with social media trends, you don’t have time to laboriously comb through your posts for errors. Paste your posts in, correct the errors, and get it posted, fast!

4. Document Grader

This tool is great for writers that are serious about improving their writing for social media. Document Grader checks your work for errors, but also gives targeted advice for making your writing more engaging for your intended audience. As you keep writing and using the site, your writing will improve organically. Keep using the tool and you’ll soon find that your writing will be top tier, and capable of bringing in customers.

5. Freelancer

If you want more control over who edits your posts, this site is for you. Enter all the information relevant to the job, such as your budget, what experience you need from your editor, and what skills they need, and get back free quotes from their proof reader database. You can build up a relationship with proof readers too, making sure all of your posts are similar in tone and style.

6. Essay Roo: Australian Writing Service

Need help creating catchy blog posts? The writers at Australian writing company EssayRoo can help you out. Give them the topics you need to cover and the product you’re looking to sell, and they can create unique, engaging blog posts for you. This frees you up to write other posts, or focus on other areas of your business.

7. Grammarly

Struggle with your grammar when writing? Grammarly has your back. It checks your work for all kinds of errors, many of which Microsoft Word can’t find. It also shows you the errors you commonly make, and gives you the theory behind the grammar rules you need to learn. The best part is that you can embed it into Chrome, having it running in everything you write.

8. Slick Write

If you know that you have certain issues with your writing, Slick Write may be for you. You can paste in your writing, and ask for customizable feedback on your work. It’s the quickest way to get instant feedback, and before long you’ll be making huge strides in improvement, and creating top quality posts.

Bonus social media writing tips

These tools are amazing for upping your social media game, but remember that any great post begins between you and the keyboard. Here’s some tips to help you start with great material that will bring in the customers.

Keep on top of trends

Keep an eye on what’s trending in your industry. Do you sell custom jewelry, and are pieces made with dollhouse pieces trending? Get in on the conversation, and you can gain new fans, followers and customers with ease.

Check, check, and double check

Google the phrase ‘social media faux pas’ and you’ll find thousands of results that will probably make you never want to touch your Twitter account again. However, 99.99% of issues can be avoided by reading your posts over before posting them. Remember, nothing written in anger should ever be published, and comments written down often don’t come across the same way as they would when said aloud.

Have someone else read your posts

The best and easiest way to spot errors in your writing is to have someone read it aloud. Listening to your writing, you can hear problems easily and fix them before publication. It also helps you check the tone of your posts before they go live, helping nip any potential issues in the bud.

Check your images and hyperlinks

When you’re at your busiest, you’ll be working across multiple posts at once, pasting in links and images as you go. However, before that post goes live, make sure your images are relevant to your post, and check that the links go where you want to send your customers. Nothing’s worse than receiving a whole slew of messages from people who’ve found that your link goes nowhere.

These tools and tips are great guidelines to getting started with social media, but only you know what really makes your business tick. Who are your customers, and what do they want from you? Carve out your own niche online by creating relatable, engaging content that your readers will want to share, and you’ll see success in no time.

Good writing is a huge part of successful social media campaigns, so it’s vital you get it right. Use these tools to improve your writing, and you’ll see that anyone can become a master writer with a little bit of time, effort and hard work.

This article was originally written by Mary Walton for the Heyo blog.

For a message that travels further

It’s the age of the startup, and it seems like everywhere you look people are launching their own business. Disconcertingly, for many of us, the marketing process seems like uncharted territory.

Establishing and developing your brand’s online presence is a critical step and knowing where to start can be tricky. So here are 9 essential steps that will help any new business establish a brand identity and a great online presence!

Continue reading →

Running a Back-To-School contest or sweepstakes is a great way to engage your social media audience during a peak retail window. As students and parents rush to prepare for the new school year, they’re looking for inspiration and offers that will help them make purchase decisions. And with so many brands competing for their attention, giving this audience a reason to engage with your brand early on gives you a better chance of building a relationship that will last well beyond the Fall. The point is, Back-To-School is Around-The-Corner so it’s time to jump on it.

The good news is there are a lot of ways to break into the back-to-school conversation, no matter what your brand’s product or service offering is. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Visual Marketing Campaigns. Even though attention is starting to focus forward into the school year, there’s still a great opportunity to invite users to share their summer fun with your brand’s community for a chance to win a relevant back-to-school prize. Run a photo or video contest where people can submit their content for a chance to win. Registration will be required for entry, allowing you to continue to grow your marketing communications database.

• Instant Win or Hashtag Promo with a Discount Code. Drive traffic to both eComm and Brick & Mortar purchase settings by running an instant win or hashtag campaign where all winners receive a discount code towards the purchase of a product or service that fits into the back-to-school landscape.

Unsure of where to run your promotion? Facebook Contests are a great way to reach a wide range of customers, while Instagram or Twitter will each reach a different demographic. Maybe you want to capture customers who are already visiting your site – in which case a contest microsite would be more relevant.

Struggling to figure out how to insert your brand into the Back-To-School conversation? Our Customer Success team will help you strategize on the best way to leverage this energetic shopping window in a way that makes the most sense for your brand. Contact Us to learn more or to schedule a demo with an Account Representative.

When it comes to engaging your audience and involving them in the larger conversation for your brand, UGC contests are a great way to go. Things really get interesting when the conversation is about important global issues that give people an opportunity to have a voice and make a difference.

CGAP (the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor) – 2016 Photo Contest 

Now in its eleventh year, the CGAP Photo Contest is back in the form of a gorgeous contest microsite where entrants can upload photos that capture the importance of microfinance efforts around the world. This photo contest was custom built by Votigo’s talented development team and features multi-language toggle functionality, geo-detected landing page display and social sharing to increase reach and awareness.

Film4Climate Global Video Competition 2016

The Film4Climate video competition invites entrants to submit a video that shares what climate change means to them and what they are doing to promote action. This custom video contest also features a multi-language toggle, as well as One-Click Publish to YouTube functionality and dynamic insertion of pre-and-post-roll frames onto all video submissions.

Want to learn more about our products, services or platform level offerings? Click here to schedule a live demo with an Account Representative.