• About “social media” contests

    Posted on August 6th, 2008 by and currently 3 commenting.

    You can’t turn around these days without getting smacked in the face with another online community/social media contest. It’s ‘submit your video‘ over here or ‘tell us your story‘ over there and the ‘how tos‘ are endless. And that’s a GOOD thing. Involvement. Participation. Interaction with the brand. It seems everyone and their mother are jumping on this already crowded bandwagon.

    (You knew there was a ‘but’ coming, didn’t you?)

    BUT here are the two major flaws we see in most of these social media contests:

    1)    In the vast majority of these cases, it’s the brand saying, ‘We want YOU to do something for US. Talk about US. Make it about US. Tell US how much you love US.’ Sure, there’s participation, but it’s a controlled participation. There are rules involved. Guidelines. Parameters.

    2)    Contests are a great tool. But that’s all they are. Contests aren’t sustainable. Once the contest is over, it’s forgotten about. It’s rarely brought up again and the brand is left looking for something else to try and hold the attention of the public for another fleeting moment.

    So before you go and have yet another online contest, think about making it all about your biggest fans – not about you. And even more importantly, make sure the contest is in the context of something bigger than just another contest. In other words, maybe you can do something a lot more meaningful with that time and money to embrace your biggest fans and potential fans. Maybe the bandwagon doesn’t look all that enticing. And maybe once you have established something deeper and meaningful (a la a movement) then a contest might make a lot more sense – or even better, those that are involved and love you will start coming up with their own contests). If it does or doesn’t, well that answer will be as plain as the nose on your face.

  • http://www.greensmithconsulting.com Paul Smith

    Agreed Spike. One example that my client is doing that I think gets this right is the Chill Out contest being co-presented by the National Wildlife Federation and Go Green Tube. It’s basically encouraging college students across the US to create videos about existing or ideas about ways to address global climate change, in whatever fashion they see fit.

    Beyond the competition, it’s going to be a sort of “coming out” party for Go Green Tube, which offsets a pound of carbon per video watched, and hopefully with my encouragement, for each uploaded as well. So this will have both an environmental and commercial benefit, focused on the participants.

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  • http://www.projectbreakout.com Wilson Green

    Thank you for your article, but I would have to disagree. There are plenty of reasons why these contest’s DO work and you only mentioned a few. In a web 2.0 environment, a lot of companies have no clue about social media, how to implement it, or how to reach their online audience… let alone engage them on a level that drives brand interaction and facilitates open dialogue. The fact that companies are still throwing dollars at traditional campaigns when stats show us that their market heavily filters static ad’s, show’s the slow lethargic way in which companies are slow to react to change. Of course Social Media isn’t an exact science but it’s a proven fact that companies that find way’s to effectively engage their audience online have a much better chance at gathering valuable feedback and creating brand awareness. Sometimes just enough to convince Senior Management to at least look at adopting a fully integrated Social Media Marketing Strategy. My guess is that Social Media is here to stay and companies that don’t jump on board will be left to wonder what happened to their customer base. Think about this for a second. One thing I always ask my clients is what happens when a customer leaves your website? Do they come back and visit later on in the day, next week, next year, or ever? Interactive Contest’s give you more control over that scenerio. It gives your audience a reason to come back again and again. Sure the contest may only last for 2 or 3 months but these are the types of promotions that companies can run again and again. Just as a traditional marketer would want to run banner ad’s again and again. Of course you change up the format, offer something new and compelling, and you measure results. More importantly you stay involved in the interaction and use it as an opportunity to be an evangelist for your brand and to find out as much as possible about your current and future customers. I applaud companies that take the initiative to get involved in social media to learn more about what their customers want. You are right, however, with a little research and perhaps a little blogging, companies can find out more about what their audience likes and deploy a contest that not only excites the audience but allows them to wrap their brand around it. That’s where a good social media consultant comes in to ensure that the necessary research about the brand and business objectives is analyzed before deployment. Thank you for your article.

    Wilson Greene
    ProjectBreakout.com