Best Social Media Contest Ideas & Examples to Improve your Engagement
Social media contest ideas and examples are all over the internet these days. Marketers have experimented with their brands and developed some fine examples for the future reference.
If you have ever run any contest or are going to host one, then you must know that finding that one bait that grabs attention and engages audience is essential. The contest marketing segment has become slightly stagnant at this point of time as brands are repeating styles and most of these social media contest ideas are not genuine.
Be it the Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, social media contest examples are plenty in number.
Most of these ideas are already in use and have become both repetitive and redundant. So to stand out from the crowd you need to understand your audience, read engagement analytics and make notes of minute details that create bigger influence.
Designing a social media contest strategy with best ideas is subjective to all companies and brands. Therefore, you need to study your needs, target market, supplies and potential grounds with better opportunity.
Social media contests are the best way to build brand awareness, work on the brand image and improve the overall credibility.
Here we have listed some amazing social media contest ideas beside their examples that would help you learn how to increase engagement rates.
Let me brief you some of the types of social media contest which accommodate the rest examples and plans.
- Photo contest: we mentioned this at the first place because it is the most widely used type of contest that gets amazing responses. Brands can simply ask followers to post a picture of any specific type along with specified hashtag and mention as per requirements. Winners can be picked based on the creativity of their entry or just in the way the marketers decide to.
- Video contest: it is similar to the photo contest but as the name suggests engagement involves videos and GIFs from contestants.
- Trivia contest: pop some fun questions related to your industry, interests of your audience or pop culture to get maximum engagement. This will also help you know how much the market is aware about your brand or industry thus plan strategy accordingly.
- Vote promotion: it is one of the smartest social media contest ideas where you will provide options to your viewers to vote. Here the entrant of the contest can use your hashtags and mention amidst their audience which will bring maximum reach and unique followers to your profile.
- Sweepstakes: It is a lottery or raffle type of social media contest that will also act as lead generation tool. Entrants are encouraged to enter their email address and name on the landing page of the website to win prize. Winner can be picked randomly.
- Comment and like to win contest: In this type of social media contest you can ask your followers to comment or like on your pages, profiles and posts. A random winner can be picked to complete the process.
Unique Social media contest ideas with examples
There are many social media contest ideas that particularly help in elevating the engagement rates. The contest is hosted after launching a contest where the followers share or retweet the post on their walls, stories and other social media channels. The winner is picked randomly and given a shout out on the brand’s official page. Most of the time the contest is an add on over like and comment contests which see huge engagement.
#2 Tag a friend to win
How about launching a fun contest and asking the entrants to further tag their friends? It is highly engaging and successful. Out of most social media contest ideas we can rely on this to provide leads and newer target markets after uplifting the engagement rates. it is basically a friend tags a friend who tags another friend thereby creating the wave effect in the pool of social media users. We have several social media contest examples that will guide you on how to make it a successful event.
#3 Best caption contest
As the name itself suggest this contest is about posting any unique picture or video or any graphical representation of any event/ situation and asking the participants to provide a short content for it. Captioning involves creativity and understanding of the subject provided. With this contest brands will not only engage their customers with proper brainstorming but also gather more user generated content for future use. It is fun, interesting and makes sure people remember your brand for a longer period of time. Do announce the winner and give a shout out to their profiles.
#4 Co-promotion contests
Social media contest ideas are diverse in their outcomes therefore you can decide as per your requirements. In order to increase your brand’s reach in all direction you can partner or associate with another brand, macro influencer or agency.
A prize package can be decided mutually and the contest can be promoted on all of your social media channels for maximum engagement. Co-promotional contests involve more than one partner catering to same audience due to which the success rate double and risks get minimised.
#5 Loop Giveaways and contests
To explain this contest further let us understand the simple idea by taking 3 businesses in the same industry or serving similar audience. Let them be X, Y, Z where X directs its followers to Y and Y in return sends followers to engage on Z’s profile while Z guides his followers to X.
The process of redirecting own consumers to each other’s channel not just brings in more publicity, leads and engagement but also generates fresh leads beside unique users.
#6 Crowdsource Collaboration contests
The social media contest ideas can be collectively performed for best results on engagement. Crowdsource collaborations are mostly contests where we can accumulate like-minded audiences to share their experiences, interests and ideas to win a declared prize. Crowdsource activities are great social media contest examples which is more or less the combination of identity contests and UGC contests. Brands may ask concerned groups or communities on social media to identify similar traits among themselves while generating content. With this technique the marketers can gather user generated content for future campaigns and posts.
Social media contest ideas are unending and more can be created by ideating and understanding audience interests and requirements over social media platforms.
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