The idea behind social contests and promotions is to build community and to influence word-of-mouth. We’ve already spoken about the 4 types of people that make up a community and the 4 types of engagement, by putting those two together we come up with 4X4 Concept Of Social Media Contests.
Instead of taking the time to explain this in the analytical sense, let’s get a little creative and create a fictional dealership, we will call it Next Gen Motors. Now, Next Gen Motors has an idea for a contest and in this contest they are giving away an iPad (not too imaginative I know but watch what they do with it!)
Two weeks out from the start of the contest they let everybody know through email, in-person, radio and their electronic billboard that they will be having a contest to win an iPad on their Facebook page. The contest rules state that there will be a series of challenges that will each account for a certain number of points, at the end of the contest (one month) the person with the most points will win the contest.
Now, keep in mind the four levels of engagement:
- Consumption
- Curation
- Creation
- Collaboration
Obviously we aren’t going to start right out having people create content, of course there will be some people who will but if this is done the right way we will be able to move people up the ladder of social engagement and generate more user generated content than if we went right for content creation. Remember, the 4 types of people that make up the online community as well:
- Consumers
- Engagers
- Influencers
- Brand Ambassadors
So, the first challenge would be something simple such as a trivia question(s). The reason we start off this way is because we want to get the consumers involved, if we asked for a video right up front, we would alienate some people that would have created a video if they already had some points assigned to them.
After a few days of trivia questions, Next Gen Motors decides that they want to ask an open ended question that has no wrong answer, the challenge sounds something like this:
For 10 points tell everybody what your dream vacation is, then get as many people to like your answer, on our page, as possible. We will give you one extra point for each like you receive. (Make sure that you take a look at the TOS of the social network you are using. Facebook wouldn’t allow this type of question to be asked so instead you could use a third party app such as the Wildfire App. There is a cost associated with it but not a whole lot.)
Think about what that does for a moment. First, it allows everybody to get 10 points, then it prompts people to ask all of their friends to like their comment and of course their friends can’t like their comment unless they first like Next Gen Motors page. I’ve seen this type of challenge alone add thousands, it all depends on how well you hype the contests ahead of time and how good the prize is.
Now that Next Gen Motors has a few players, they decide to up the ante a little bit by asking people to upload pictures of themselves next to an iPad display in the next three days. Again, they gave points for the picture and points for each like on the picture. (Again, use the Wildefire App for this type of contest.)
Next Gen Motor then decides that they want to ask a few more trivia questions to bolster some points on the board. In fact, they even decide to give away giftcards for right answers, whether or not the right answer is in the contest or not. What this does, is enables the people that were invited by the people in the contest, to like their pictures, a chance to win something for themselves, thus creating more community engagement.
Now that there are 4 dozen or so people playing (some dropped off because they were too far behind) , it’s time to ask for videos. Next Gen Motors decides that they want to get as many videos created as possible so they word the video challenge like this:
For 50 points create a video explaining why you should win the iPad, somewhere in the video there should be the words Next Gen Motors. Then, receive one extra point for each person that likes it and an extra 15 if you are the most creative, as voted on by the employees of Next Gen Motors.(You guessed it, use a third party app such as the Wildfire App)
Since Next Gen Motors spent time building up the challenges, there was 24 videos created (We’ve seen hundreds in larger promotions), 62 images uploaded and 3,182 people added in 4 weeks. Thats the 4X4 method of running successful social media contests.
ACTION STEP: Create, on paper, a social media contest. Choose the prize, set up the challenges and assign points.
