Make Your Contest Post 100% Successful: Tips and Strategies

I bet you have an idea of what a Facebook or Instagram contest can be even if you have never taken part in it. And if you have, then the things we are going to talk about will probably be somewhat simpler for you to understand. Still, our today task is quite complicated and requires your rapt attention. Do you think you are ready to start? Alright, here we go!

We are going to look at the nature of social media contests not from the participant’s point of view, but from that of the organizer, or it’s better to say the designer. You will see that the well-thought contest can even become the source of effective online assignment writing help for your project when you need some statistics, for example; to say nothing about the experience and skills you will acquire while working on such kind of mass entertainment and, by the way, advertising.

What Is an Online Social Media Contest Briefly

In general, an online contest is an activity that implies a competition or vote among Internet users. There are several different types of such contests and we will discuss each of them in more detail a little bit later. Of course, in most cases the winner of any social media competition receives a particular prize. The organizer (or the team of organizers) also gets certain benefits, which would fully satisfy the goals set for the contest if it was successful.

Who can arrange contests online? In fact, everybody can. However, the successful contest must serve a clear purpose for both its participant and designer. Otherwise, not only you but at least a few tens of other people will simply waste the precious time on getting nothing.

• Just a common user can post a contest on his or her Facebook timeline in order to attract other people; the purposes for the latter can be literally endless. Let’s assume that you write poems or knit nice scarfs. So, you want others to know about it and either to share their creative skills or to buy your scarfs. The captivating competition as a way of advertising your hobby and skills is a good idea in both cases.  
• Your school (college, university) can organize some particular type of contest to raffle off the free school bus tour or to choose the school president, the best essay writer and so on.
• An online store can run a special contest offering discounts and some free options or raffling off the certificate for some 500$ purchase.   
• A company or any other organization holds a contest to attract certain groups of people to the products it sells or to its activity. Also, the contest can help to do research and determine who prefers the company’s products or services more. In this way, the company can get to know its customers much better and coordinate its main efforts towards meeting their expectations.

How You Can Benefit from Your Contest

Now as we have made out what the online contest is and who can run it, let’s move to its main pluses. Below you will find some interesting info on why your successful competition is a useful and necessary thing you can be truly proud of. (Who knows, maybe it will even become a great piece of online assignment writing help in your research paper or some great point to mention in your CV.)

It Will Promote Your Ideas (Projects, Products, Etc.)

It is true that social networks are amazingly powerful cyberspaces in which the information spreads incredibly fast. Putting aside the concerns over this undeniable fact, it should be acknowledged that the contest on your wall in Facebook or on your Instagram can considerably benefit to the promotion of anything you want to share with others. Probably, it’s the easiest way to let a large number of people know who you are and what you can do, as well as to make them get interested in you and things you offer to them. However, the latter requires particularly much attention, because your mistakes and the drawbacks you may miss can be revealed as soon as your post is shared.        

It Will Help You Build and Expand Your Audience

Obviously, the more people like your page (here I mean both their attitude to the brand you offer and the sign “Like” under your post), the more successful it and you become. So, when you decide to run your own online contest, one of your main goals is definitely to achieve the increase in the number of your subscribers and followers. If you do everything right, you will succeed! The well-organized contest will help you to build the strong and regular community around your ideas or products, which in its turn will spread the info about your offers to their families, friends and colleagues, therefore engaging more and more people to join.

It Will Provide You with Valuable Data

Above we have already mentioned that the statistics and results of your contest can turn into a rich portion of your online assignment writing help for carrying out some big research work on the topic of your thesis or completing some project in sociology. At the same time, you get the opportunity to learn more about your audience’s age, social statuses, preferences as well as about many other essential aspects that can show you the whole picture of the contestants’ needs and expectations. Besides, the good knowledge of your audience will stand you in a good stead when you try to prognosticate what they may want in the foreseeable future. By the way, this is the right strategy for your success!

6 Most Popular Types of Online Contests

In case you would like to hold your own original challenge, here are a few ideas which you can base it on. The type you choose will serve as a skeleton or structure for your project, while your aims and creativity will help you to make it interesting, bright, useful and beneficial. 

• Sweepstakes: the participants of such contest can get multiply entries, and the winner is chosen randomly. Besides, they can enter in different ways and do sharing, therefore amplifying the reach of the contest.
• Photo contest: it implies that your contestants will take photos and post them according to the rules and requirements you set; the winner’s photo should have the biggest number of “likes”.
• Video contest: roughly speaking, its principles resemble those of the photo contest. However, as participants’ video files can have different formats and quality, you should either provide special requirements for them or use the software which will allow your entrants to upload and share the videos without any kind of technical difficulties.
• Essay contest: it can be really good online assignment writing help for a student who doesn’t have much time for doing homework. Just hold the essay contest two or three weeks before the deadline, prepare a nice prize for the winner, and voilà! You have your paper written well, and the lucky guy/girl is satisfied as well! However, if speaking seriously, such contest is a great way to share writing experience, let others try out their skills and build a strong team of talented people, together with whom you can work on future projects.   
• Vote contest: as the name suggests, in this contest the participants are going to vote for the option they support. This can provide you with a large amount of helpful information. So, you would know your main audience better and understand what they want.   
• Quiz contest: the quiz offers the participants a range of questions on one or several different topics. The winner is obviously the one who has more right answers than other contestants. In order to make the quiz more challenging, you can set the strict time frames for answering. So, the participant won’t have much time for googling.   

What You Should Do Before Running the Contest

Before you enter Facebook and start your work on the challenge, pinning big hopes on it, there are a few very important things you should take into your consideration. Nothing bad will happen if you somehow forget about them, because each of them is actually an integral part of the whole contest-designing process. So, you will anyway return to this or that stage while working on the “draft”. Still, following the tips down below will save your time and nerves.

To narrow the rather wide scale of the issue and make it easier for you to grasp the main guidelines on organizing online contests, we are going to take Facebook as the social network basis. Nowadays, it’s probably the most popular and best-developed platform for such kind of projects (with online assignment writing help and other types of writing service included).

1. Determine Your Goals and Choose Your Type

It’s very important to understand what exactly you personally expect from the competition you are planning to hold. If you need the statistics, then voting is the most suitable option. If you want to introduce to others some product or service, you should choose sweepstakes or, probably, a photo challenge. Also, on the Net you can look for some examples of the most successful and creative contests in order to know which way you should go.

2. Learn Facebook Policies Well

It will help you and the entrants to avoid probable difficulties with accessing the contest, sharing the post, voting and so on. Besides, in August 2013 Facebook announced the special alterations of their Pages Terms which concerned holding contests in general.  For example, among the most significant issues there were the following:

• the users run contests at their own peril, without any assistance or administration on the part of Facebook;
• the organizer of the competition cannot require the participants to share a post or to post something on their personal or their friends’ timelines in case they would like to enter the contest;
• contestants cannot be made to tag themselves in photos in case they would like to vote or to enter. 

3. Decide on Your Main Audience

Although it may seem not very important concern, still you should understand clearly who you want to see as a participant of the challenge. If it’s going to be only for the students of your college, then make sure that students from other schools cannot take part in it. The thing is that the possible entrants for whom your contest isn’t actually intended can greatly influence its outcome. So, if you want everything to be fair and transparent, consider who participates in the activity.   

4. Set Clear Rules and Requirements

By default, well-thought rules and requirements will make it easier for the contestants to understand what they need to do in order to get the prize. At the same time, you, as the organizer, will orient yourself much better within the frames of your own project. That said, rules will help you not just to choose the winner, but also to recognize some possible efforts of speculation or other kinds of online fraud.   

5. Choose a Great Prize for Your Winner

If you are a self-respecting creator of an online social media challenge, then you should provide your winner (or winners) with nice prize(s). According to the information provided by Hubspot Blog, top 5 categories for prizes are travels, entertainment, music, technology and fashion. By the way, if you want to provide your mates with professional online assignment writing help, the prize may be your own college paper! (Of course, I’m kidding, but you’ve grasped the idea.)

Some Simple Steps to Design the Successful Online Contest

Now let’s check the following aspects of running a really great online contest, so that you could benefit from it and the contestants could remain satisfied, waiting for your next projects.

1. Decide how the participants can enter your contest; for example, they can either like or share the post, comment on it, offer their ideas and so on.
2. Pin the contest post at the very beginning of your timeline and attach a bright, easy-to-notice picture.
3. Keep your style simple but exciting. You need to catch people’s attention, but try not to overload them with too complicated requirements and too solemn figures of speech.
4. Set the deadline for the challenge. Again, according to Hubspot Blog, the optimal duration is 25 or 60 days.
5. Don’t disregard those who couldn’t succeed. Of course, the winner will get the prize, but at least you can send thank-you messages to other participants, encouraging them to try again when you hold the next contest. Besides, there guys who take part not to win but just for fun, so they will be glad to receive a message from you.

That’s all for now! Hope you will find these tips really effective and your next contest project will be simply outstanding. Good Luck!