The business goal of Facebook is ultimately lead generation and new sales, but that only happens through engagement. And engagement doesn’t happen without fans on your page. In this video, Eric Spellmann explains a way to turbocharge your fan-growth through the use of Facebook contests. He walks you step-by-step through the process and even gives his favorite third-party contest apps! WARNING: If you do not follow the rules he goes over in this presentation, you may get banned by Facebook!
Note from Eric: Below, you will find a word-for-word transcript of this video. I provide this as an aid for the hearing-impaired and for those who might just want to read it rather than watch the video. This conversational style is not reflective of how I write. Be nice! Hey I am Eric Spellmann with ericspellmann.com. And today we’re going to be talking about Facebook contests. I love Facebook contests. They are great and they work but you got to know how to work with them. So first of all understand the rules of Facebook contests because Facebook actually does have rules. They used to not have rules but now they do.
Number 1, if you’re going to run a contest on Facebook you must use a third party app. You can’t just go in and use Facebook by itself; there must be a third party app. As it relates to “likes”, because really that’s the reason you do a Facebook contest is because you want to add a number of likes or add a number of engagements on Facebook.
First of all, you can require page likes and you can require check-ins for people to participate. However, you cannot require post likes or require people to comment. Those are official Facebook rules. So keep that in mind when you go through this.
Your contest check list should include the following. Number 1, it’s gotta have voting options. In other words, people have to be able to vote. They have to be able to participate on something. It just depends on what kind of contest you want. There’s got to be analytics.
And whatever third party app you choose, they must be able to give you statistics showing you how well it did. How many people participated, how many people “liked” your page? It needs to have mobile support. Make sure whoever you choose; it works on both the Facebook mobile app and on the web because you’re going to have a lot of participation from both.
You need to choose a vendor. And theres quite a few vendors out there. Basically the top players I’ve run into are OfferPop, Wildfire, Woobox, Votigo, Strutta and North Social. And by the way you can just a “.com” on any of these and find them.
Those are the main ones out there that I’ve participated in. Now Offer Pop is my current favourite mainly because the pricing is really good and also because their apps just work. Never had any problem with them. And a lot of my customers have used these and everything went sensationally.
What kind of contest? Because believe it or not theres a lot of contest types out there. Remember your goal is page likes and engagement. You want people to participate, you want people to go to your page and either like it or do something on it because that’s the whole goal of this thing in the first place.
My favorite one that seems to work the best is the photo vote where people can post photos and they get their friends to vote on them. And of course in order to vote on a photo, they must like your page. I’ve seen a lot of success with this particular contest.
You got to choose the prize because people aren’t going to a contest unless there’s a winner. So what kind of a prize should you offer? Basically you need to offer an incentive to all entrants. Some people get this wrong and it only needs to be a single prize.
There needs to be something even if it’s just a coupon, a discount or something just for participating. But then for the main prize, you need to pick a prize that’s tied to your business. You don’t necessarily need to give away an iPad, give a gift card to your business. It can be something that benefits you, something that gets em engaged with your services.
Choose the rules. You have to have rules in your contest. How long is the contest going to be? In other words is it going to last from this date to this date? What kind of vote limits are there. Are you going to let people vote every hour, every day or just once.
I usually like the vote daily limitation because if you let them vote hourly they will never get their friends to participate in it, they’ll just go in and vote themselves. But if you just allow them to vote once, well they’re not coming back over and over, so I like the vote daily option so that way every day they’re coming to your page.
Also, you can collect their email addresses so you can start sending them your email newsletters. Think about what you’re going to collect and you gotta let them know what you’re going to do with that data.
Then you got to run the contest. Set the bar; write down how many “likes” your page currently has. That way you can see how well the contest did. You’re going to announce this thing via email and the web. Tell everyone about it. You’re going to draw as many people to the contest as possible. And then reinforce daily. Push it daily. You want to get the most out of this, you push it daily! And then finally award your prize.
And then, of course give Loser Gifts. And theres no other way for me to call that. But remember, they are just as valuable as the winner to your page and you want them coming back also. So, give em that discount coupon, give em that something when the contest is over.
Well as always I am Eric Spellmann with EricSpellmann.com. And I’d love to hear what you think on this. So feel free to go to my Facebook page or my website.
Also, I wanted to let you know I do another set of videos for basic computer users. If you know people who’re just beginning to use a computer and need to know how to use it and need some help, you might check out computertips101.com. I’d love to help about.
So once again I’m Eric Spellmann with Spellmann & Associates, I’ll see you in cyberspace.