A Few of Our Favorite Social Promotions

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With 2012 coming to a close, we’re reflecting on some of our favorite social promotions from 2012! Here are a few of my favorites.

When creating a social promotion it is important to build the idea of the contest around something that will peak your fans’ interest and encourage their involvement with your business.  The Oregon Zoo met all of these expectations with their Baby Elephant Due Date Pool Sweepstakes.  The promotion was set up in a way to educate fans about Asian elephants and to create awareness for the birth of Rose-Tu’s second calf.  The Oregon zoo discovered that an Asian elephant’s pregnancy lasts 22 months and they encouraged fans to guess the calf’s due date for a chance to be first in line for the calf’s public debut! The Oregon Zoo did a great job building hype and interest around the event of the birth.  It is a unique idea to create a promotion around an event that does not have a definite date, allowing for anticipation and excitement.  The contest also encouraged entrants to get their friends to guess by allowing each winner to bring a friend to the debut. The lucky winners got to share in the special and memorable event at the Oregon Zoo.

 

Another great promotion that took a fun initiative to engage fans was Chipotle’s Boorito Photo Contest.  The promotion had a fun title and a great Halloween design that was eye catching and relevant to the Halloween theme of the promotion.  Chipotle asked fans to enter the contest by submitting a picture of them in costume in front of a Chipotle restaurant.  This fun idea encouraged fans to visit Chipotle and participate in the Halloween festivities.   The promotion created a great way for fans to stay engaged by incorporating a voting process where fans can vote for entries and easily share their favorite photos. The lucky grand prize winner won $2,500, five runner up winners received $1,000, and 20 entrants received the honorable mention prize which consists of a sponsor-specified burrito party at the winner’s select Chipotle Mexican Grill location for up to 10 people.  The contest did a great job incorporating a holiday theme into their contest and keeps fans thinking about Chipotle.

Often when planning a sweepstakes, the big question on people’s minds is how to spread the message and create maximum awareness.  A great example of a sweepstakes that encourages fans to share and spread the message is Olga’s Kitchen Lunch Buddies Sweepstakes. Fans can enter the sweepstakes for a chance to win a year of Olga’s with three lucky friends.  Fans are prompted to share their entry with others and receive additional entries for each friend who enters the sweepstakes.  By sharing their entry they are increasing their chance to win! Olga’s Kitchen also requires the entrant to “Like” their Facebook page in order to participate in the Sweepstakes, which allows the entrant to promote Olga’s even before entering.

When creating a sweepstakes or contest it is a good idea to create a theme that promotes your brands essence and message.  Energizer created the Change Your Clock Change Your Battery Sweepstakes that highlighted safety, a subject matter that Energizer takes pride in and cares about.  For 25 years Energizer has partnered with the International Association of Fire Chiefs and has been helping to keep families safe.  The sweepstakes promoted important safety tips and encouraged users to enter to win a free safety kit worth more than $150.  Energizer awarded 25 winners in total who received the safety kit and everyone who entered and visited the promotion had access to all the safety tips provided by Energizer.

Another brand that has created a promotion to highlight their brand essence is CITGO with its Fueling Good promotion.  CITGO’s central idea is to help change the world mile after mile and each year the CITGO Fueling Good program gives away $120,000 in gift cards to charities in the hope to help ordinary citizens doing extraordinary things for their communities.  Twelve charities are selected each year and the exciting part is that fans can vote for their favorite charities. CITGO has created a custom microsite for the promotion where non-profit organizations and charities can register for a chance to win and where users can easily look up charities and vote for their favorites.  The microsite provides well-designed and informational videos showing how far a gallon of gas can go, inspiring fans to get involved and a vote.  Each charity that chooses to register must submit a photo and three essays that describe the service their charity provides, a description of the ripple effect the charity’s good creates in their community, and an explanation of how CITGO gift cards would benefit their charity.  CITGO’s Fueling Good promotion encourages people to give back to their community and to learn more about charities that work to better the world.  The promotion runs every year, don’t miss your chance to become involved!

These are just a few of the awesome contests and sweepstakes from 2012. I can’t wait for 2013 to see all of the fun and innovative promotions brands run to engage their fans!

 

 

 

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Votigo Offers Google+ Integration

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We believe in cross channel social marketing.

Why? Because your brand’s audience is uniquely spread across, and engaged with, an assortment of social networks.  Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr, Spotify, LinkedIn and more.

Launched late last year, Google+ has come on strong with a highly engaged audience, unique modes of communication, and carefully-designed integration with other Google offerings- from Gmail to YouTube to, of course, search.

Votigo is proud to be among the first social marketing platforms to integrate with Google+.  Starting today, you can:

  • Connect your Google+ brand page to your Votigo account
  • Publish posts, targets posts to your circles, moderate comments and measure engagement for your Google+ audience using Social Conversation Manager
  • Or post messages to help launch a Votigo-powered Promotion App using Promotions Messenger

Google+ is already integrated into your Votigo account if you are a SaaS customer, and in Promotions Messenger for self-service users.  To request an overview on using Votigo’s Google+ tools, click here.

Or just log-in here (or create a free account) and get started!

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Holiday Social Media Marketing: 5 Trends For Retail Brands

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Black Friday is in 4 days, kicking off the massive holiday season that makes the year for many retail brands.  Odds are, social marketing is a bigger part of your Q4 strategy this year than ever before.  Here are 5 big themes that will dominate holiday social media marketing campaigns for retailers in the remaining holiday weeks of 2012:

Social Launches:  New product introductions and sales events are a staple of Q4. They’re a great way to create buzz and generate customer interest through social marketing.  Watch for (and plan) product debuts or events on Facebook, Pinterest, and YouTube.Brooks Running illustrates holiday social media marketing campaigns in 2012

Recognizing Great Customers: Even for brands with millions of customers- and definitely for boutiques and local businesses- there is a movement to recognize your best customers.  Loyalty programs,  membership clubs, even a Customer of the Day promotion. All are simple ways to earn repeat business. Social channels are a natural distribution channel for these programs.

Rewarding Social Engagement:  All evidence continues to show that consumers follow brands on social channels to earn an exclusive, an offer, a discount, a preview.  Retail brands are in prime position to capitalize.  Even for social followers who haven’t converted to customers yet, it is worth the effort to offer a unique opportunity through Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and where ever you have followers.

In-Store Activation:  In retail, it’s all about the cash register.  Even as holiday spending shifts online, there is still no substitute to brick-and-mortar retailers for motivating the in-store experience.  A social promotion that results in a coupon, invitation or other store-driven event doesn’t need to be complex. But it will help convert social fans to visitors who can see your store environment, touch your products, experience your service and convert to new customers.

Mobile Enables Lasting Brand Engagement:  Most consumers will be using their smartphones gratuitously in the next 6 weeks. They’ll share wish lists, compare prices, pass along gift ideas and more, using photo, video, text and social updates.  Savvy brands will find unique ways to encourage and even facilitate those interactions. Even though the holiday season ends in a mere 6 weeks, try to find clever ways to weave impressions of happy customers into your ongoing brand storytelling.

For specific ideas and strategies to tackle each of these trends, click here.

 

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New Viral Features & Apps: DIY Update

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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.”

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Search for a Champion Video Contest

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Wondersauce, a digital agency, came together with Champion Spark Plugs to launch the Search for a Champion video contest. Champion utilizes Votigo’s API technology and integrates it into their own custom website.  The video contest encourages fans to enter a two-minute video for a chance to become one of the fifteen winners to receive a $5,000 Champion sponsorship and to compete for the grand prize sponsorship of $50,000.  Champion makes the deal even sweeter by rewarding the first 250 entrants with a free Champion Swag Bag including one 2013 Search for a Champion t-shirt, one Champion hat, one Search for a Champion decal and one Champion decal. The custom website shows pictures of each prize that comes in the bag so entrants can see what they will be winning.  The site also provides a spot to sign up to win a free weekly giveaway consisting of a free Champion product.

The custom online video contest is easy to navigate and well organized with information including tips on how to create a winning entry video, advice from the 2012 contest winners, and a contest timeline providing all of the important contest dates and deadlines.  Full-width, HD video capabilities are also included to push each video entry to the next level.  There is a video entry gallery that allows fans to browse the entries and gives entrants the tools to promote their entry all the way to the top by sharing entries on Facebook, posting to Twitter, and emailing friends.  This is especially important because the contest winners will be chosen by a series of public votes.  Fans can register as a voter and vote for their favorite videos.  Champion encourages fans to vote for their favorite racer by offering a voting sweepstakes prize. Two hundred lucky voters will receive a free Champion t-shirt and a poster autographed by Kevin Harvick.

Champion does great job engaging fans with their custom site and offers generous and relevant prizes to the fans with the best videos.  For more information on how to integrate API technology into a custom site for your contest contact us today!

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Should You Allow Voting In Your Contest?

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Running an online contest can help you engage fans and allow them to interact with your company and brand.  It is always important to use techniques that will encourage your fans to stay engaged with the contest even after they enter.  One way to do this is to consider allowing fans to vote on entries.  For some businesses this is a great idea because people are prompted to spread their entry to get more friends to vote, creating a viral effect. Voting can promote more word-of-mouth marketing for your brand because entrants will spread the word to gather votes. This will in turn create more awareness of the promotion and your brand.  Voting also gives the incentive for fans to continue to visit the promotion page and acts as another step in the online contest.  It is a fun way for fans to take an active role in the outcome of the contest.

When considering if your contest should be 100% decided by public vote, it is important to understand what this means for the contest and to be prepared to hand over control of the outcome to your fans.  Another way to incorporate public voting in your contest while still maintaining some control over the outcome is to create a round of voting to narrow down the entries that are in the running to win. After allowing this period of voting you can then create a panel of judges who will decide the winner.  This will still encourage fans to stay engaged and to share their entries virally, while also allowing your brand to maintain some control.

Some businesses may prefer not to allow fans to vote and instead rely on complete brand control.  This means that your brand or business will be in charge of the entire voting process.  A fun way to do this while keeping your fans interested is to incorporate a panel of expert judges that appeal to your target audience.  This will give your fans the incentive to stay tuned to the contest and to continue to visit the promotion site.

Each option above provides a great way for entrants to stay interested in your contest. It depends on what your particular brand goals are  concerning the promotion and it is important to consider which strategy will fit best with your company. For more information on Facebook Contests and fun ways to keep customers engaged contact us today!

Need help creating a Facebook contest or sweepstakes? Download our Free Guide!

        

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Finish Strong: Launch a Q4 Promotion!

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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!




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PetSmart Halloween Photo Contest

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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.

 

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Viral Social Sweepstakes: Simple Fan Activation

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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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Be Vital Twitter Sweepstakes

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Johnson & Johnson wanted to spread the “Be Vital” message to their fans and customers through a Twitter promotion. Working with their agency Baldwin & Obenauf, Votigo created a custom Twitter sweeptakes that allows users to submit a tweet for a weekly chance to win a $100 prize.  By creating a Twitter promotion Johnson & Johnson is encouraging their fans to follow their Twitter page and to engage with the brand through tweeting.  Fans are asked to follow @JNJUniversity on twitter before submitting a tweet.  Once users are successfully following the twitter page they are asked to tell Johnson & Johnson what being vital means to them and how they define being vital in their life, their community, and in our world.  Users are able to enter their own stories in 140 characters or less.  Tweets are asked to be directed to @JNJUniversity with the hashtag #BeVital in order to be eligible to win. All of the tweets are displayed on a custom landing page, where uses can also submit tweets directly.

Each week, between the dates of August 27 and November 2, one winner will be selected at random to receive a $100 gift voucher for Amazon.com.  All of the winners are announced on the Twitter page with a total of ten winners.

The Twitter sweepstakes runs alongside the Be Vital Challenge, which asks student organizations to upload a video showcasing how they play a vital role in their community.

The unique idea behind using Twitter as a part of their promotion is that Johnson & Johnson is able to have their fans help spread their message of what being vital means and why it is important.  Their fans are also able to follow what other fans are tweeting.  This is a great way to engage fans with a campaign.  If you are looking for a simple and fun way to keep your customers engaged contact us today about running a Twitter sweepstakes!

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