Avoid these common social media competition mistakes!
Competitions can be a great way to gain new followers, build your mailing list, or create brand loyalty. But avoid these common mistakes that brands make to ensure you stay winning!
Don’t make it too complicated!
We’ve all seen these posts - “Follow our account and x account; tag 3 friends in the comments section and add this post to your story” - but honestly, that’s the quickest way to get a bunch of new, unengaged followers who will most likely not interact with any of your future posts, which will cause the algorithm to think your content isn’t great and eventually, they’ll unfollow you too!
Make the mechanics of your competition easy and you can be strategic about it as well. A “comment below” to enter often means you’ll get lots of engagement on your post. And chances are whichever platform you are using, will then share it with more people too!
Add clear rules!
As well as making the entry requirements easy, don’t forget to add things like an end date and any other rules that may apply.
If you will be retaining people’s personal information for example, link to your privacy policy so they know you won’t be using their data for anything untoward.
It might be an idea to create a landing page on your website especially for this competition so you can add any specific terms and conditions there.
Avoid the professional competitors
Yes, they’re out there and whilst they might be great for your social media post reach if they’re commenting and sharing to win, are they really a good winner and potential ambassador of your brand?
You don’t want to see your custom-made prize for sale on Ebay in a few days, so when choosing a winner, check out their profile first. Do they follow you and lots of friends or are they exclusively following brands and posting up discount codes they’ve found online? Avoid these not-so-worthy winners!
What do you want to win?
Why are you running your competition? Are you trying to get rid of excess stock before a use by date? Or are you trying to create a loyal customer base that you would like to buy future products?
If your answer is the second option, consider using a mailing list sign-up form to enter your competition. You might get lots of new sign-ups that will be eagerly checking their emails to see if they’ve won or not.
Even if they are not the chosen one however, you could encourage new online orders by offering all entrants a discount code (for a limited time) to encourage a surge of sales quickly (especially if what you’re giving away is coming toward the end of its life!). Plus everyone is on your mailing list for the future too.
(obviously, make sure you are including GDPR links in your competition T’s&C’s so people know they will be added to marketing emails and they can opt-out at any time!)
Announce your winner!
Don’t forget to let people know your competition has finished and a winner has been chosen. If you don’t, you leave the door open for messages and more comments below your post from potentially angry customers. The number of times I see these comments and messages go unresponded to too, checking the poor community management box whilst we’re at it!
We recommend editing the copy of the original post to say “Competition now over. Congratulations to @".
You could even re-route people back to your mailing list “to be the first to hear about our next give away”.
Don’t miss out on the UGC opportunity!
It’s the biggest marketing buzzword right now but UGC, or ‘User-Generated Content’, is potentially really helpful for your brand. So why not utilise your competition to create some UGC?
If one of the requirements of your giveaway is for your followers to create a video or photo for you, you could end up with 00’s+ of content to post in the future!
Not only that, but you may have 00’s+ accounts becoming micro influencers for your brand just by posting about you. It’s extra promotion, ensuring you’re seen by even more people 🤩
Just make sure you are including that any UGC created as part of the competition may be used by you in the future as part of your T’s&C’s!
Happy giveaways!
Has this inspired you to give a social media compeition a go or do you still have some concerns? Get in touch with us today if you need any further help!