So you’re looking for a way to reach new fans and potential customers on your Facebook page. Have you considered running a Facebook contest on your business page? For a long time, Facebook only allowed contests to be run through third-party applications. but now they are allowing any business with a Facebook page to run their own contest. Before actually starting your contest, there are a few steps you should go through in order for yours to be successful.
Running a contest just because you can will not provide you the results you are looking for. What is your ultimate goal for the contest? Do you want more engagement on your page, more likes or both? What about adding to your email list or introducing a new product or service you plan on rolling out? When you figure out exactly what you want to accomplish, it will be easier to find the right kind of contest to run. There a numerous types of contests to run and here are a few popular ones.
- A sweepstakes contest is great way to gather more email addresses. People give their name and email address to enter in a drawing for your product or a gift card. Make sure that the prize is relevant to your business. One downfall of this kind of contest is there is little engagement on your Facebook page, but you can build your email list rapidly.
- A photo contest allows fans to upload a picture to your Facebook wall. The contest could be held around a holiday, theme or something that pertains to your business. You can either pick a random winner or have people ‘Like’ the photos and the person with the most Likes wins. You can also use video instead of picture of that makes more sense for your business. For example, if you’re a flower shop, you could run a contest around Christmas time and have people upload a picture of their front door wreath. The picture that gets the most likes wins a gift card. By using this type of contest, people will get their friends to like your page and like their photo to help them win.
- Asking a trivia question is another great way to build some engagement. You can ask a question about your business, industry or even location. The more specific the question, the more likely people will want to answer. You can also choose a random winner or have the first person to answer be the winner. For example, if you are a record store, make a contest to win a new album and ask a trivia question about the band.
One thing to keep in mind is to keep your prizes tied to your business. This can turn Facebook fans into repeat customers. If someone wins one of your products as a prize, hopefully they will love it and buy more! Sure, a Visa gift card might seem like a great prize, but it has nothing to do with your business so after the contest is over people are more likely to stop following you.
Have you entered a company’s contest before? What did you like or dislike about how the company ran it?
