Effective Facebook contests

Effective Facebook contests

One of the most difficult parts of managing social media for organizations is figuring out ways to grow your audience in a smart, sustainable and ethical way. Providing interesting and useful content can help gain a new Facebook “like” – and keep people engaged who already “like” your Page – but how do you get people to first find your Page?

Contests can help give people a reason to like your page and share your content. We’ve run many contests for our clients, and one of the most successful was a 10-week contest for the Discover Ybor City Facebook Page for the Ybor City Development Corporation. In the course of the contest, the Page’s “likes” grew by 65 percent, resulting in more than 1,900 new “likes.”

We’ve outlined a few tips for helping you run a successful Facebook contest:

  • Determine your goal. Do you want 10 very engaged participants or 500 contest entries? Do you want to engage your current fan base or gain new ones? Once you’ve decided on a goal, you can develop a contest to help you meet the goals.
  • Create an incentive. Prizes can be large or small – but the most unique or unusual ones, such as a behind-the-scenes tour, might get the best reaction. Part of the success of the Discover Ybor City campaign was due to how entrants had an excellent chance of winning - 50 prize packs worth $75 or more were awarded over the 10 weeks.
  • Keep it simple. To enter the contest, users had to “like” Discover Ybor City and fill out a short form with their names, email addresses and phone numbers, which were used to contact the winners. Entering was easy and unobtrusive.

No matter the goal, Facebook contests (done well) can help grow engagement on your Facebook Page, because they give users a reason to visit your Page, as well as to “like” and comment on posts going forward.