http://https://youtu.be/DXm7AdlVS48
Competitions are rarely useful for building a properly qualified audience, but can be great when a brand needs to build a good bit of noise, for example when launching.
You will have seen many various types of competition doing the rounds on the social networks.
Most of are of a “retweet to win” or “like and share this page”. Both of these types of competition are in violation of Twitter and Facebook’s terms of service.
For years those of us who like to think compliance first have been lone wild voices shrieking doom but with no obvious sign of an impending social media apocalypse many marketers ignored this and did quite well building / farming audiences for their clients using these non compliant techniques.
No More! With Facebook’s strangle hold on reach getting ever tighter we are now seeing much greater enforcement of the rules.
When paying to promote your content to your fans, a Facebook moderator is sent to view your page and content to ensure compliance – I recently had to modify a campaign as we could not boost a post until we removed promotional text from a cover image.
With “Boosted” posts really now being the only way to reach your fans we will see a move to more compliant app based competitions.
Even better- drive the traffic to your site and reap the benefits directly.
E. Promotions
3. Promotions may be administered on Pages or within apps on Facebook. Personal Timelines must not be used to administer promotions (ex: “share on your Timeline to enter” or “share on your friend’s Timeline to get additional entries” is not permitted).
Source: Facebook Page Guidelines
A good way to leverage your competition budget is to partner with a marketing savvy charity.
Find some local causes you have genuine feelings for and stalk them online to see which in your short-list is the most vocal and connected on social media.
Call and ask to speak to their marketing or fund-raising department. Give them an overview of your plans and see what they think.
Don’t be dismayed if at first you don’t get your “hand bitten off” as the burden of red tape in the Third Sector is huge, more often than not a charity will find it’s hands tied when trying to reach for the choicest opportunities.
Despite this, by working with a charity you feel for, not only will your marketing efforts be boosted by your new partners, these things tend to bring more rewards than simply improved website visitors 😉