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A Great Example
Do you know what a Wheel Woolie is? If you do, that’s great! However, most people don’t and that is a challenge we are currently tackling with a contest. A Wheel Woolie is a brush for cleaning the wheels of your car. We were hired by Wheel Woolies to increase the awareness of their product amongst consumers. In order to do so, we launched a contest through Facebook offering a Wheel Woolie Car Detailing Kit and the results were significant. A little less than a month had gone by and their likes had surpassed 1,000 with over 600 people talking about them! Believe it or not before the contest they only had 10 likes.
Are you wondering what steps we took to have such a successful contest? No worries, we will walk you through the process.
Follow The Rules
The first step is to get acquainted with the rules. Facebook has a lot of rules and regulations regarding contests run on their website. Naturally they just want to make sure everything stays legal and that none of their users are getting gipped out of a prize.
An important rule is that you must run the contest through an Application. At OverGo Studio we use the North Social Sweepstakes App, but there are other Apps out there that may suit your needs better. Once installed, the Application will become a tab on your page, separate from your wall. Facebook only allows contests to be administered in this way. For instance, you are not allowed to say “Like this wall post/comment on this photo/upload a photo to enter for a chance to win an iPhone!” If Facebook catches you running a contest in that manner they could potentially ban you. What you can do, however, is have someone like the page in order to get access to the app you are running the contest on.
Another important rule to keep in mind is that you must completely separate your contest from Facebook. Even though you are running the contest on their website, they want all liability to rest with you. They have no desire to get tangled up in court if you plan on breaking the law. It’s completely understandable. Basically, you must inform every entrant that Facebook is in no way sponsoring, endorsing or associated with the contest and that any information they provide goes to you and not to Facebook.
Also, you are not allowed to notify any winners through Facebook. You must contact them outside of the website via the phone or email.
Target Your Ideal Customer
The second step in order to run a successful contest on Facebook would be to figure out the type of person you want to like your page and come up with a prize that appeals to that person. For instance, if your business was maternity consulting and you wanted more mothers-to-be to know about your services, you could run a contest offering a gift card to a baby-clothing store. That would be something that appeals to expectant mothers and attracts them to your page. If you instead ran a contest offering them tickets to a heavy death metal concert, more than likely they would not be into it.
Now that you know how to get started with your Facebook contest, you're all set to actually go through the steps of setting it up!
Photo Credit: Facebook Like Button by Sean MacEntee
Contests are an excellent way to promote your business through Facebook. Running a contest will increase the amount of likes on your page while at the same time doing something constructive with your page’s current fans.
If you have only recently hopped on the Social Media bandwagon, increasing your Facebook page’s likes should be one of your top priorities. The more likes you have, the greater the reach of your offers and messages. Contests are a guaranteed way to turn that single digit number next to the thumbs-up icon to a double, triple or even quadruple digit number! Even if you have thousands of fans already, contests are a surefire way to keep the masses engaged and talking about your business.
