Three rules and one easy trick to make your competitions on Facebook more compelling
Successful competitions on social media is a tough nut to crack, and you should consider if what you want to achieve is really worth the hassle of creating a competition or if a simple brand positioning post or ad will do the trick more effectively.
However, if you decide to do a competition, there are a few basic rules and one easy trick that sets the greater performing competitions apart from the not so great.
#1: Make sure the concept of participating is clear
You need to start by avoiding the most common mistake: unclear copy.
If your copy is too complicated and slightly arbitrary people will lose interest within a second and scroll past your competition leaving it as a sad thing pointing back at your brand negatively.
So, the base of a great competition starts by making sure that you’ve made a crisp clear copy enabling people — in an instance, to decode, that this is a competition and this is how they participate.
Let someone who has not been involved in the creation of the copy for the competition answer if they immediately understand that it’s a competition and what the prize is.
#2: Frame your product as desirable
Besides the fact, that the copy needs to be straightforward and clear, you should also not make the mistake of doing brand awareness for other brands product. -You want to frame your product as the desirable prize. -Not letting your product be the prize is basically saying that what you sell is not desirable.
Below is an example of the travel agency framing their fall-destinations as prizes worth winning while also keeping the copy as clear as possible on the fact that it’s a competition.
#3: Be careful not to ask for too much
The third basic rule, I’d like to share, is to consider if you’re asking too much of your audience for them to care to participate.
From my experience, underperforming competitions often fail, because they ask their audience to interrupt their current activity -entertaining themselves by browsing their Facebook newsfeed, and instead go to another social medium, like Instagram, or go to the brand website. Or you’ve might be asking the audience to take a picture and upload it before they can win the prize, which might be a great way to get your audience involved as advocates for the use of your product. But you might also risk that demanding a picture is too big a threshold.
The audience’s willingness to take steps abrupting their current activity will depend on how valuable they find the prize.
So, just like you want to check if people immediately understand that it’s a competition, you also want to ask an unbiased person (or more — the more, the merrier, of course) their honest opinion: is the prize worth the effort you demand from people? If not, you need to ease down on the steps to participate.
Let people advocate your product by tagging others
Saving the fun part for last: the easy trick.
If your product is something people can share, let the participants of the competition help spread it in their network and thus create more awareness about your product.
You initiate this by asking the audience to tag the person with whom they would like to share the prize in a comment. — Furthermore, the participants who interact by tagging a friend or family member, become direct advocates of your product towards this person and those who see their interaction in their newsfeed.
An example:
To sum up, when making brand positioning aimed-competitions on Facebook you want to do the following things:
-Keep your text clear and have simple participation steps.
-Test your demands to make sure your audience cares for the prize before publishing it online.
-If your test shows that you are demanding too much, ease up on the participation threshold.
-Consider if tagging friends or family is a possibility –If yes, then go ahead and try to let your competition gain awareness organically.
That’s it, my friends.
Comment if you got a trick up your sleeve you’re willing to share with the rest of us to make better competitions.
Featured image of ladder taken by Samuel Seller.
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