Social media has revolutionized both physical and online stores in recent years. Having an online presence on leading social networks like Facebook and Twitter has become a priority, and one of the most widely used tools for generating leads is Facebook contests.
Tips for creating Facebook contests
Facebook’s policies on contests and promotions have changed a lot in recent years. Social media contests have become powerful marketing weapons for generating leads, improving engagement, enhancing brand reputation or gaining followers.
As we’ve said, it’s a powerful weapon that should be used knowledgeably and with a set of pre-established guidelines to help us carry out the best contest promotion strategy:
- Set your goals
The question is clear: what do you want to achieve with the contest? It’s important to define the goals or targets. The most common are gaining more followers for your page or driving more traffic to your online store, but other goals can also help us understand our followers’ interests and tastes in more depth.
- Define your audience
The contest’s target audience depends on the goals you’ve set, since a contest designed to learn the interests of your Facebook page followers won’t be the same as one meant to boost sales or traffic to your store.
Before launching any kind of promotion, you need to know for certain which audience you want to reach.
- Choose the prize and contest type
It’s not just about choosing your goals or audience; you also need to decide what kind of contest to run: photo contest, giveaway, quiz, etc. There are many types of contests, but they all share one thing: people take part because they want to win the prize.
The main reason a user enters a contest is the prize. So choose a prize that’s related to your brand, adds value for your audience and is attractive enough that as many people as possible want to take part to win it.
- Set the budget
The next step is knowing the contest budget. It should include both the cost of the prize and the cost of promoting the contest. A Facebook Ads campaign can be very useful to spread the word.
- How will the contest work?
The message must be clear. Users will want to know what the contest involves and how to win the prize, so we need to set out its details concisely and clearly on the Facebook page or on a dedicated landing page in the online store.
- Monitor the contest
The contest promotion also needs to be monitored while it’s running. Answering questions, keeping an eye on how it’s going, acting quickly if problems arise and informing the winners are all things users will appreciate.
- Apps for creating Facebook contests
Facebook contests can be run from the platform itself, but there are plenty of tools for creating contests on this social network, such as Easypromos, one of the best known and most widely used.
- Measure the contest results
To know whether the contest has met the goals set at the start, we need to measure the results. The metrics that will tell us are: number of fans gained, reach of each post, number of clicks, comments and number of participants.
Once all these parameters are defined, we must take special care not to breach Facebook’s policies on contests and promotions.
Pay close attention to Facebook’s policies
A Facebook Ads campaign or a contest on the social network can often breach the rules or terms set by Facebook itself. This can lead to the contest being suspended or even the Facebook page being shut down.
To prevent this, you need to know some of the current Facebook policies that govern promotions and contests:
- State the age limit for entering the contest.
- Make it clear that the contest is in no way sponsored, administered or endorsed by Facebook.
- A sponsored post promoting the contest can’t include images with more than 20% text.
- The contest rules must state that no participant can hold Facebook responsible for the giveaway or contest.
- If you collect participants’ personal data in the contest, make it clear that it’s collected by the company running the contest, not by Facebook.
- Since last year, personal timelines can’t be used as a way to run the contest. For example, using “share this on your timeline to enter” is prohibited. Nor can you ask users to tag their friends to enter the contest.
Now it’s your turn to decide: are you ready to create a Facebook contest to promote your online store?
Image credits: Vilma Nuñez
