subject: Social Media Contests And Sweepstakes For Marketing [print this page] Though Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn get a lot of the press these days when it comes to social media marketing, they aren't the only games in town. In fact, blogging should be one of your core essentials for media marketing, and you should make your blog an engaging, interactive platform. Establishing your blog as a social media draw may take three to six months of steady effort, but it will be well worth the effort. You may choose to hire social media marketing services to help with this very important process.
Additionally, social media marketing services are knowledgeable about using contests and sweepstakes to promote your website, and you should consider such promotions as part of your web marketing strategy. According to Jupiter Research, 80% of all web users have entered at least one sweepstakes over the past year, and more than 50% participate in contests once a month ore more. With sweepstakes, winners are selected randomly, and with contests, winners are selected through an official evaluation process.
If you want to limit participation to a target audience, then contests are probably your better choice. Say you own an independent bookstore. A short story contest lets you target people who love to write, and these people almost always love to read too. Then again, you could have a sweepstakes where you hold a drawing to give away a selection of top books in order to cast a wide net and attract people who haven't purchased from your site before.
Your goal when you use social media marketing to promote a contest or sweepstakes is to create publicity, but secondary goals should be to gather contacts, learn about your site's visitors, and educate the participants on what your site offers. Entry forms may include names, email addresses, and even phone numbers. You should ask permission to make future contact with entrants rather than making it a requirement. Some contest holders require participants to complete a survey before entering. This is a great way to research your site's visitors' preferences.
Remember that you're not allowed to make people buy something before entering, and you cannot make it so that making a purchase increases chances of winning. Writing the rules of your contest is a process that should be vetted by an experienced attorney, because of the complexity of state and local laws, though social media marketing services can often help greatly with this.
To drum up enthusiasm for your social media marketing promotion, send email invitations to your opt-in list, place ads on your site, and mention your contest or sweepstakes on your social media pages and Twitter, along with links to drive traffic to your entry page. Encourage every participant to invite friends to enter, and add your contest to your Facebook Fan page.
After you choose the winner, invite those who participated and opted in for future communications to participate in a special offer, which could be a free gift with purchase, a discount or coupon code, or a freebie of some sort. Be sure to thank participants, and do your best to win these people over from being contest participants to being customers.
