Running Competitions on Facebook & Instagram

Running competitions on Facebook and Instagram are always fun, engaging and when done right, can be a fantastic source of new clients to your business. This powerful strategy is used by many organisations to boost engagement, following, and brand awareness organically. Who doesn’t love a good free product or service that you can win by doing very little? We know we love them!

An important point to know about running competitions on Facebook is that in December 2017, Facebook started penalising engagement baiting. Marketers must be cautious of what requirements you create for your competition’s entry criteria because if you add too many actions for a participant to enter, you may be penalised by Facebook. Engagement baiting is highly penalised as it takes advantage of news feed algorithms and is being highly annoying. Penalties include reducing your future organic reach. However, there are lots of positive attributes to competitions.

Competitions are great for increasing:

• Visibility
• Reach
• Engagement
• Website traffic
• Social media following
• Brand awareness
• Customer satisfaction
• Unique and visual content creation

With so many opportunities and positive outcomes with competitions, what are you waiting for? Here’s how to get started on your new competition!

How to Run a Competition

It is important that businesses start with a clear direction for the competition. We have created a simple list to help you get your exciting new competition running! 

• What do you want this competition to achieve?

1. 1. What goals are you after? Are they achievable?
   2. What KPIs do you want to achieve? (Be sure you check your Analytics and Insights before you start your competition).

• What target audience do you want your competition to reach?

1. 1. Do you want to target new visitors, current customers or previous customers? 

• What prize will you be giving away?

1. 1. What will your prize be? Will it be a physical product or a service? Is it attractive to your target audience?
   2. How many prizes will you be giving away?

• What are the criteria for your competition?

1. 1. What will the entry requirements be? Will users have to like, tag, follow, etc to be in the draw to win? Make it simple!
   2. What will the timeframe be?
   3. What are the terms and conditions of the competition? Keep in mind that Facebook and Instagram have specific competition rules. Read Instagram’s Promotional Guideline here and Facebook’s Promotional Guideline here.

• How will you create content for your competition?

1. 1. Will you create images, videos, gifs, flyers etc.? Images or short videos can be easily created with Canva.
   2. Ensure that your content copy is easy to read. Don’t overcomplicate it!

• How will you launch and promote your competition?

1. 1. Which social platforms will you be posting the competition on? e.g. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Email, etc. Do you have friends or business partners that will help you promote and share your competition?
   2. Will you be using paid advertising such as Google Ads or Facebook Ads to boost your competitions reach? 
   3. Do you need to tailor the message on different social channels? It is not recommended to run the same competition across more than one social media channel with different wording 
   4. Which hashtags will effectively engage your target audience?

• How will you pick your winner?

1. 1. You can pick your winner/s by organising all participants into a spreadsheet in a neat column. From there, you can use free tools such as “Random Number Generator” or “Random Name Picker” to choose your winner! Alternatively, you can do the old-fashioned “pick the name from the jar” and post it online!

• How will you measure your results?

When your competition is over, how will you be measuring your success and results? Some insights you can consider measuring are:

• • Engagement rate in social media platforms
  • Follower growth in social channels
  • Website traffic growth
  • Compare your Analytics and Insights after your competition has ended.
  • Amount of unfollows after the following weeks. (This isn’t a bad thing! This simply shows who your real target audience is and you’ll get to know them well).

We hope this marketing tip will help you create unique and exciting competitions that will boost your business goals!

Psst… Keep an eye out on our social media channels for our exciting competition launching this afternoon to celebrate our third birthday! ?

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