Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Flipboard 0 Is there a recipe for a high performing social contest? Is it the industry, the prize, or maybe just a little bit of luck? Social contests are relatively straightforward to implement if done right. And I want to emphasize “if” since we see a ton of mistakes being made every day that are easy to avoid. Here a few of the biggest secrets we found after running over 2,000 campaigns for our clients last year… Contest Secret #1: Target the Right Audience Take for example you have a company that competes with the athleticwear company, Lululemon. If you’re promoting a social campaign, the best thing to do would be to go into Facebook ads and target “Lululemon” as the main audience interest, right? Wrong! People who already Like Lululemon already have a preferred athleisure company they’re loyal to. It’s called Lululemon. So targeting people this way is a BIG no go, especially for smaller and newer brands. So what should you do? Instead, go into Facebook and check out a feature called Facebook Audience Insights. Once inside, search for people who like “Lululemon” then take a look at the list other pages that those people also Like. If you find a brand has a similar vibe to yours then you might have just found a community of people who: Fit the demographic you’re looking to target Don’t have any brand loyalty to a competitors brand Use this as the starting point for your social media ads, and you’ll be amazed by the difference it makes. Contest Secret #2: Move Beyond Social You probably want to run a social contest to grow your audience, get your content (and business) seen, and eventually get more long term customers as a result. But if you post something on social media and no one sees it, does it really matter? Let me explain. On Facebook, there’s something called organic reach. Organic reach is basically the number of people who Like your page who will eventually end up seeing your content. Previously organic reach stat around 15 – 16% for brands (meaning if 100 people Liked your page, 15 – 16 of them would see an update whenever you posted). Today, that number’s been reported to be as low as 2% and possibly even lower recently. That means that all your content and all the work you spent building your social audience isn’t resulting in anything! In short, I’d highly recommend NOT running these types of campaigns: Like to win Comment to win Share to win Follow to win While these might provide you a short burst of followers and engagement, it’s short-lived and will have little to no impact on your company’s success long term. So what should you do? Focus on collecting emails Email lists, while might sound old school to some of you is still the #1 customer acquisition channel for small and medium-sized businesses and has been shown to have a 32X ROI when used the right way. And contests are one of the best ways to grow an email list, fast. Here’s an example from a giveaway from Bhu Foods. Notice how the main call-to-action in this contest is to collect a name and email? That’s not accidental. Oh ya, and social engagement? You can still incentivize that too! Reward users with bonus entries into the contest by taking additional social actions like Following, sharing, and referring their friends to the contest. These are just two elements that we found makes a huge difference in the success or failure of a good social contest. But there are countless more… Twitter Tweet Facebook Share Email This article originally appeared on Wishpond Blog and has been republished with permission.Find out how to syndicate your content with B2C Author: Connor Brooke Connor is a Scottish financial expert, specialising in wealth management and equity investing. Based in Glasgow, Connor writes full-time for a wide selection of financial websites, whilst also providing startup consulting to small businesses. Holding a Bachelor’s degree in Finance, and a Master’s degree in Investment Fund Management, Connor has … View full profile ›More by this author:ACH Crypto Price Prediction 2022 – Is it a Buy?Lucky Block Partners with Dillian Whyte ahead of Heavyweight Showdown with Tyson FuryNFT Pixel Art – The Best NFT Collections for 2022