Design Tips for Contests and Sweepstakes

Running a Facebook contest or sweepstakes is a great way to boost engagement on social channels and grow your audience. There are many variables to consider when you decide to run contests and sweepstakes. One of the biggest opportunities for making your promotion standout is with your design. Great design can increase the number of entries you receive, improve engagement and help your promotion get noticed. We’ve put together some design tips for contests and sweepstakes that will ensure your promotion is a success. Download the free tip sheet now!



access-design-tips



Share

VTech Toys Facebook Video Contest

VTech Toys recently launched a Facebook video contest. They wanted to engage their audience and get children to interact with the brand in a fun and meaningful way while promoting the Switch & Go Dinos products. Votigo created a custom Facebook app that requires users to “like” the page before entering and allows fans to easily upload and browse through entries.

The Show and Tell with Switch and Go Dinos video contest asks fans to create a dinosaur and upload a video of their creation.  The child can choose 1 of 3 ways to show off their art project:

Draw: They can use markers, crayons, pencils and pens to sketch their creation on paper

Build: They can use foil, paper, cardboard, or any non-branded household items to build their Dino

Customize: They can update their own VTech Switch & Go Dino with accessories and fun props to give them a new image!

Fans can enter through the end of September, with voting taking place between October 8th and 19th.

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

Share

How to get more Facebook Likes

We’ve often asked how a brand can get more Facebook likes and grow their social media audience. It’s a great question and one that will get a wide variety of responses depending on who you ask. We’ve compiled a list of 10 ways that you can get more Facebook likes. Luckily, these tips will also help you build a community of engaged fans – so you’ll be getting way more than just “likes”. Ready to get started?


download-the-guide



Share

Why Mobile Marketing Matters

With the increasing popularity of mobile marketing, making your contest or sweepstakes mobile optimized is becoming less of a luxury and more of a necessity. Most people have at least one type of mobile device that they carry with them on a regular basis. As more brands adopt mobile websites and applications, people have increasingly higher expectations of the mobile experience that brands provide them.  In order to make the most of your promotion, make sure you make it easy for your audience to engage with your contest or sweepstakes on their mobile device.  By doing so you will increase entries and satisfaction among your fans.

There is a large number of people and businesses that run promotions on Facebook, as it is one of the most popular social media channels. There are 78 million Americans eighteen and older who access their Facebook accounts via their mobile devices so making sure your Facebook contest or sweepstakes is mobile optimized is critical. This enables your promotion to be on the go with your customers.  Your fans will be able to access your promotion at their own convenience and participate whether they are at home, commuting on a train, or waiting in line at the grocery store.

In order to effectively run a promotion on a mobile device it is important to build a campaign that is user friendly and intuitive.  The promotion should be easy to navigate on a mobile device and make uploading entries and participating in the promotion seamless. You can do this with a mobile optimized version of a contest microsite or with a custom mobile design. Make sure that your promotion will work and be easily visible on all kinds of mobile devices including phones and tablets. Make the design and graphics simple to avoid any user-experience issues that could cause you to lose potential fans and customers.

By creating a mobile optimized promotion, you’ll allow your fans to engage with the promotion at their convenience wherever they please.  It is a great way to cater to mobile users and to create a fun way to interact with your fans.  If you are interested in creating a mobile promotion visit our website at www.votigo.com to get the details or contact us today.

Share

Guide to Facebook Contests and Sweepstakes

Facebook contests and sweepstakes are a great way to get more Facebook likes and engage your fans. With millions of people logging into Facebook each day, it’s a great place to run a promotion. Some of the most successful brands regularly run contests and sweepstakes to ensure that they are maximizing their engagement with fans and keeping them interested and visiting their Facebook page regularly.

Of course, you don’t need to be a Fortune 500 brand in order to create a more rewarding Facebook experience for your fans. Brands and companies of all sizes can benefit from running a Facebook promotion. In fact, we’ve seen tons of smaller brands doing Facebook contests and sweepstakes and getting lots of entries and buzz!

If you’re ready to start getting more Facebook likes and engaging your fans, download Votigo’s Guide to Facebook contests and sweepstakes. Inside, you’ll find lots of great tips for designing your promotion, getting more entries and maximizing engagement.



download-the-guide

Share

Halloween: A Time for Candy and Contests

Few holidays have such a strong visual component as Halloween, making it the perfect opportunity for brands to engage their fans with a photo or video contest. Consider if your brand would benefit from a fun holiday promotion. Does your audience participate in Halloween? Do your fans like to dress-up?

Get creative and consider how your brand is relevant to the ghoulish season. Maybe you have a seasonal product that you’d like to promote for Halloween, or maybe a simple online costume contest would get your fans engaged. A Facebook contest can even provide you with visuals to use in future marketing efforts…so if you’d like to have some fun photos for a Halloween campaign next year, get those fan photos from a contest this year.

Need help getting started? Check out our guide to Facebook contests and sweepstakes.

Share

Customer Q & A Session with Robin Leedy & Associates

Robin Leedy & Associates is a Votigo customer who launched client Conair’s “Make Waves, Get Raves” summer-themed Facebook Sweepstakes to promote the brand’s featured appliances to achieve beach wave looks every day. The giveaway ran for 10 days total, with one winner chosen per day. Each winner received a beach chic prize pack with Conair hair styling appliances and brushes, scünci hair accessories, a plush beach towel, nail polish, water-proof mascara, and SPF makeup – all packaged in a cute beach tote.

Here at Votigo, we love to not only share successful campaigns, but also goals, metrics and best practices of our customers so that you may recognize the benefits of running social media promotions.

V: Did you have goals going into the campaign?

RLAPR: Our goal was to increase theConair Facebook fan base among targeted hair enthusiasts while promoting several featured Conair hair appliances for summer styles. The products and timing were very relevant to the season and the current/expanding Conair social community.  We were also able to cross-promote this giveaway on the scünci Facebook page , which is also a Conair Corporation brand, allowing for more targeted exposure of the giveaway and messaging.

V: How do you measure success- including the Facebook metrics and whatever else you look at?

RLAPR: We measure the success of the campaign through several items. We take into account the number of entries, how many new Facebook fans we received, how many shares we received for the Facebook giveaway posts, how many people were talking about the page, and how many blog posts we received mentioning the giveaway. We never do a giveaway for the sake of a giveaway…it all MUST relate to the brand’s messaging and social goals, so each giveaway works harder than just a few posts on the Facebook wall.

V: How has the response been?

RLAPR: Our response rate is very high and exceeded our goals for such a quick promotion.  We do not like giveaways on Facebook to run for long periods of time.  We don’t want to take consumers out of the purchase cycle forever because they think they might win the product instead.

V: How did you start integrating social media and how successful have you been to date?

RLAPR: Robin Leedy & Associates has been integrating social media since 2007. We’ve been very successful with working with thousands of bloggers, creating and managing clients’ Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube channels, creating and distributing videos, and launching numerous contests/sweepstakes, etc.  Like a giveaway, social media is not put in a silo. It is a mix within the brand’s marketing efforts because it then makes all the dollars go further.

V: What is your most successful social marketing project / campaign / effort to date?

RLAPR: Honestly, that would be like picking our favorite kid.  We have had many successful social marketing projects and their budgets were very varied.  One of our more successful and low cost ones was for Sea-Band anti-nausea bands  where the brand was ONLY doing social for our project period we could see its positive impact on sales, web traffic, etc.  Many times, our clients are doing a mix of marketing efforts, so it is hard to exactly measure the role of social media alone. We did bring the Softlips Facebook page to the one million fan mark earlier this year, and that was very special for us as a small agency…and we did it on a very efficient spend, as well.

V: Favorite tools & keys to success?

RLAPR: As far as social giveaways, our key to success is to make sure that all of the giveaways we run for our clients are done through Facebook sanctioned apps like Votigo. There are a lot of “illegal” giveaways that are done on Facebook, such as LIKES to a post or random comments chosen as winners. That doesn’t screen for age (COPPA rules), and creates privacy/legal issues.  If you are going to use sweeps and contests to market your Facebook page, do them in the way that protects your client vs. exposes them to legal issues or those that contradict Facebook policy.  Our overall key to success is to stay abreast of trends not only in the social/digital landscape, but the consumer mindset.  If you never heard of the term ZMOT, Google it.

V: How did you first find out about Votigo and what specific promotions have you run to date?

RLAPR: We found out about Votigo when we were searching for a more graphically-pleasing user interface for FB sweeps than our previous provider.  In the past several months, we’ve run more than 20 sweepstakes and contests for a variety of clients with Votigo and have been really happy with the set-up, costs, functionality and design.

Share

5 Key Findings from the Most Successful Promotions

hanes2We’ve put together a short list of key findings we’ve found from some the most successful promotions powered by Votigo. If you’re looking for more ideas and inspiration, check out our case studies to see what the top brands and companies are doing to drive engagement.

1) Events drive engagement. Some of our most successful customers run frequent, event-driven social media promotions around holidays, business events, and other date milestones. For example, Halloween is just around the corner. Would your brand benefit from running a Facebook photo contest around Halloween to engage your fans?

2) Local marketers – businesses with destinations or physical locations – thrive on promotions that contain a call-to-action to visit the location. Give your audience a reason to visit your location by creating a tie-in with your contest or sweepstakes. You could ask fans to take a photo at your store and upload it to your Facebook contest app.

3) The most engaging and successful promotions are the ones that promote to an existing audience in at least one other channel– emails, blogs, tweets, ads, and more. Reach out to your fans throughout the duration of your promotion.

4) You’ve got to have a great prize! $25 gift cards don’t cut it. Swag doesn’t cut it. Giveaway something valuable, cash, product or something unique! Sometimes the coolest prizes don’t cost the most money – they are just limited or exclusive products or opportunities.

5) You need to allow time. Make sure you are giving your fans enough time to enter your contest – it can take fans several weeks to put together a video entry or pic the right photo. Make sure you give them that opportunity.

What other keys to success have you found when running promotions?

 

Share

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words…or Likes

Generating quality content is a hot topic in the social media space for brands and agencies alike. They are constantly evolving their social media marketing strategy to better engage their current audience and attract new fans on Facebook. In an era where content is king, it’s hard to determine which specific type of content will receive the most engagement. This may be the reason why we see such a vast variety of content posts; brands are testing to see which type receives the most “likes,” comments and shares. What is your opinion?

While Facebook users are receptive to different types of content, various studies have shown that the primary media commanding the most attention and interaction is photos. A picture is of one of the simplest and most effective ways a brand can capture attention because it is more visually appealing than a status update or link post. Think about it this way, when you scroll through your newsfeed what usually captures your attention and makes you pause for reaction? PHOTOS. It allows for a more immediate emotional reaction from users on Facebook thus urging them to engage by commenting, liking or sharing your post.

Now that brands are aware of this fact, they can and should use this to their advantage! Here are some great ideas to kick start your efforts:

Try posting a unique photo with a question attached. This will drive dialogue with your fans and encourage them to interact and share with their friends! Behind the scenes photos are also great – they give fans a view into the personal side of your business. Aspirational photos and product photos are also great options for driving engagement. Try out different types of photos and see what your audience responds to.

If you’re looking to increase engagement even further, consider running a Facebook photo contest. A photo contest is a great way to not only interact with your fans directly, but to also increase your fan base, acquire data and receive great images for use in future marketing efforts. A unique theme and/or great prize will ensure entries and drive engagement! Learn more about how to run a Facebook contest.

So, if you are wondering how to increase engagement on your Facebook page, trying using photos! Product photos, aspirational photos and behind the scenes photos are all popular choices. To really engage fans and grow your social presence, run a photo contest – your fans will love to browse entries and they will have an incentive to share their photos as well.

 

Share

Event Driven Promotions

Creating a social media promotion around an event is a great way to increase the awareness of your event and to help generate buzz.  Event driven promotions draw people to the event and can act as an extension of the event itself by helping it spread through social media channels and increasing brand visibility. One of the great things about events is that they take the brand to the people and generate excitement and interest.  By creating a social media promotion alongside your event you can extend the life of your event and tie it into your social media efforts.

  • Events only happen once and therefor are immediate and interesting, make sure to make the most of the event within its limited time of relevance.
  • Promoting your event on social media with the use of a Facebook contest or sweepstakes creates awareness and buzz for your event, allowing the guest list to grow.
  • By creating a promotion around an event, you are engaging with customers and fans virtually and not just at the event, allowing you to reach an even larger audience.

 

A great example of an event driven promotion is the JBL Your Country contest from Isobar North America, JBL, and Tim McGraw.  Votigo created a sweepstakes app that allowed users to upload photos and videos for a chance to win a VIP concert experience with country singer Tim McGraw or free Tim McGraw Artist Series headphones.  This event driven promotion does a great job building awareness for Tim McGraw’s Artist Series headphones from JBL and also promotes his “Brothers of the Sun” summer concert series.  The promotion is a fun and easy way to create awareness and to build your fan base.

By creating a promotion that goes hand in hand with your event you are empowering your customers to engage with your event on social media and to share the event information as far as their circles of influence reach.  The event driven promotion is a fun way to advertise your event while simultaneously creating a way for your customers to interact with your brand.  If you are interested in creating a promotion visit our website to get the details or contact us today.

Share