subject: How to Engage Your Social Media Audience [print this page] How to Engage Your Social Media Audience How to Engage Your Social Media Audience
I've seen several large corporations effectively captivate large audiences with all types of contests on Facebook and Twitter, and there's no reason that small businesses can't generate a local buzz with a contest.
Just like any other marketing activity, the ultimate goal of a contest is to build brand awareness and get customers talking, texting, and tweeting about your brand. However, the upside of holding a contest is that it can be a more genuine form of communication between you and your target audience than generic advertising that basically says: "This is my product. This is my price. Come buy it."
Let's use a local restaurant as an example, and imagine you are the potential consumer. Think of a restaurant that you're on the fence about. Maybe the service wasn't great the last time you went, or you were surprised how expensive everything was, or maybe you had to wait a really long time for a table.
That restaurant owner wants to get you (and everyone else on the fence) to come back. But how does he or she do that if you had a mediocre experience the last time you went? If he or she runs a local TV commercial that says the restaurant has great service, low prices, and it doesn't take long to get a table, are you going to trust the commercial and forget about the last time you ate there? Probably not.
But if the owner ran a contest, it could be a much more genuine way to stay top-of-mind and regain your trust. A better TV commercial would be one in which the owner said that the restaurant was having a favorite menu item contest. In the TV commercial, the call-to-action would be to follow the restaurant on a social media site like Facebook, pick your favorite dish, and write one sentence on the wall about why you like that menu item the best. The prize could even be a gift card to that restaurant.
By holding that contest, the restaurant will get many new Facebook followers, tons of posts with positive emotions about various dishes, and some really good feedback about the menu. Now compare that with a typical TV commercial that just talks about how great the restaurant is from the owner's perspective. As a fence sitter, would you be more likely to give the restaurant another shot if they offered you a chance to win a gift card (and by default you saw a bunch of posts with descriptions of people's favorite dishes), or if the owner simply told you it was a great place to eat?
But you don't need to have a restaurant or even a big marketing budget to run a successful contest. If you're a service company, offer one of your services for free for the customer that gives you the best testimonial. If you're a company that's always trying to develop the latest gadget, hold an invention contest and give away a cash prize to the contestant that comes up with the best new idea. If you're in the fashion industry, hold a worst outfit picture contest and award the winner a wardrobe makeover.
All of these contests incentivize people to engage with your brand. And if you run the contest on Facebook or Twitter, it's public. It's no longer a closed forum between a contest that mails in a submission and a company that judges the entries. Everyone that's following the contest can see everything that's being posted.
Of course that's not to say you should run a contest without determining objectives and allocating resources. You don't want to slap a cheesy contest together without developing specific goals and creating a budget for the amount of money, and more importantly the amount of time you will invest.
The process of brainstorming a contest, promoting it, sorting through the entries, and picking a winner can be consuming, but if you plan for it in advance and develop specific objectives, it can be a very powerful way to build a social media following.
