Como hacer y medir concursos en Redes Sociales

SOCIALMEDIACONTESTS

HOW TO PLAN,EXECUTE AND

MEASURE

INTRODUCTION

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

Know the law | 01

Know the rules | 04

Know the risks | 06

PLANNING, EXECUTING AND MEASURING YOUR PROMOTION

Defining your goals | 07

Budgeting | 08

Workflow | 08

Choosing your network | 09

Facebook Twitter Pinterest

Cross-promotion | 10

Tracking | 10

Post-contest analysis | 11

Prize fulfillment and delivery | 11

CONCLUSION

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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HOW TO PLAN, EXECUTE AND MEASURE SOCIAL MEDIA CONTESTS Lookingfor a fun way to attract new users, increase engagement or build alibrary of user-generated content? Run a social media contest. Butbefore you start brainstorming, do your homework. A poorly runcontest can get you in trouble with your audience and social mediasites. You could also suffer legal ramifications if not executedaccording to federal and state law.

In this guide, well give you a general primer on social mediacontests, along with specific tips for running them on Facebook,Twitter and Pinterest. Youll also get some advice for executingyour contest and making the most of your results.

1. Know the law If youve ever run any type of contest, youprobably already know that they are subject to various legalrequirements. All these laws supersede any channel-specific rulesor etiquette guidelines, and violating them can subject you tofines or civil litigation.

Laws can vary depending on your region or state. Its a good ideato consult your legal team before running a major promotion, buthere are some general things to keep in mind:

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

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Use the right terminology: A sweepstakes awards prizes based onchance: every entry gets equal consideration. A contest impliesskill: winners are chosen based on the merits of their entry.Sweepstakes and contests are subject to different laws, and thereare multiple definitions of what constitutes a skill.

Sweepstakes Cannot require a purchase to enter. You can ask fora purchase, but you will have to provide a free entry option andclearly disclose it. You may be able to require that entrantsopt-in to receive emails or subscribe to your blog.

Contest These include many popular social media promotions:photo and video contests, caption contests and the like. While youcannot require a purchase to enter, you may be able to mandate thatan image of your product be used in the entry. If it involves somesort of judging process, you should disclose who the judges will beand the basis for selecting the winners. If winners will beselected through a random drawing, though, it may qualify as asweepstakes.

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Terms and conditions In addition to the contest deadlines andconditions for entry, youll want to think about:

Eligibility You should consider prohibiting certain peopletypically company employees, their immediate families, agencies orvendors, and maybe even people under a certain age from entering.Youll want to avoid introducing any kind of bias, or the risk ofviolating consent laws.

Rights of usage If the contest asks for user-generated content,such as photos, videos, taglines, etc., you might want to specifythat all entries become the property of your company, and can beused in any way you see fit.

Announcement of winners Clearly define when and where winnerswill be announced. Make sure to post them somewhere on yourwebsite, so you can benefit from the increased traffic.

Disclaimers Include cover your hide language such as void whereprohibited, no purchase necessary, all federal, state and localtaxes apply, etc. Again, your legal team should be able to draft asolid set of disclaimers.

Registrations, fees and bonding Some states require thatcompanies register or post a bond before launching certainpromotions, so be sure to check.

Other legal considerations Not to scare you, but your promotionmay also be affected by certain other laws. While its tempting tocut and paste your rules and conditions from another source, youshould use caution. Have your legal team read over everything, justto be safe.

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2. Know the rules Every social media platform has specific rulesfor contests, sweepstakes and promotions, and they get updatedfrequently. If you violate them, you wont be charged with a crime,but your promotion may be halted, and further violations may getyou banned from the site.

Facebook Facebook probably has the most extensive set of rulesall of which can be found on the Facebook Promotions Guidelines. Beaware that Facebook is a little more lax about its rules than inthe past. As of August 2013, you can now use likes, posts andpersonal messages as voting mechanisms, and promotions can beadministered on Page Timelines as well as via Facebook apps. Butyou still must make it clear that your promotion is in no wayendorsed or administered by Facebook.

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Twitter Their guidelines can be found here, and mostly revolvearound preventing spam, duplicate postings, and discouraging thecreation of multiple accounts. Violating the rules could get yourpromotion filtered out of Twitter search.

Pinterest Being a highly visual site, Pinterest contestguidelines focus on adhering to their brand guidelines emphasizingquality over quantity. You cant require that entrants pin specificitems, or add a minimum number of pins. Like Facebook, Pinterestmakes it clear that they are not responsible for the contest in anyway. And they must have gotten sick of the phrase Pin It to Win It,because you cant refer to your contest by that name anymore. Readthe full guidelines here.

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3. Know the risks You cant expect everyone to follow the rules,or even the spirit of the contest. Opportunists and trolls may comeout of the closet. Or worse, your competition may shut you down. Afew things to watch out for:

Cheating If you put your entries up for public voting, dont besurprised if users create multiple accounts for the sole purpose ofracking up votes. This is especially dangerous on Twitter. Cheatingcan lead to customer complaints, which can harm your company imageand derail your promotion.

Trolling If you run a photo or video contest, make sure you havecontrol over whose content can be viewed. Like it or not, somepeople may see it as an opportunity to complain, or present yourbrand in a poor light. Trolls also have been known to hijackcomment threads and contest hashtags.

Lawsuits Avoid mentioning your competition in your promotion.Quiznos, the sandwich chain, was sued by rival Subway after it rana promotion inviting users to create and upload homemadecommercials showing why their sandwiches were superior. Even thoughQuiznos argued that they had no hand in content creation, the adswere created on the companys behalf and Quiznos ended up settlingout of court.

Trolls are people who literally troll the internet social media,blogs, forums, comment sections, etc. seeking any opportunity tomake comments that incite reaction from other users.

What is an internet troll?

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Legal ramifications aside, social media contests and sweepstakesare a great way to promote your business and drive lots of greatfan activity on your social pages. Now that you have an overview ofthe general landscape, its time to get started.

1. Define your goals for the promotion Do you want to attractnew friends and followers? Add to your email or opt-in list? Builda library of user-generated content? Sell products? Your goalsshould tie into your overall sales and marketing objectives. Whatdoes success look like? If theres a metric you have had troublereaching, a promotion could help move the needle. Conductpre-promotional analysis to see where you need help, and thendesign your promotion accordingly.

Make sure you clearly define goals and KPIs before thepromotion, and decide which metrics youll use to determine success.Furthermore, make sure youll have access to those metrics. Theresnothing worse than wanting to track something after the fact, andrealizing that you dont have the data.

Additionally, make sure theres buyoff on what your successmetrics are, and what numbers you need to hit to call the campaigna success. If your boss, your boss boss or your boss boss bossneeds to OK the plan, have them sign off before you start runningthe promotion.

All of this will make it much easier for reporting anddetermining success after the campaign is finished.

PLANNING YOUR PROMOTION

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2. Carve out a budget A great set of prizes will help generateinterest. Get creative: discover whats trending or popular amongyour target demographic and base your prizes around that. You mightbe craving the latest techie gadget, but your audience mightrespond better to a spa day or glamorous getaway. Think about whatyour brand offers and why your target audience might be interestedin you your prize should reflect that.

Figure out how much you have to spend on prizes, as well as thehard costs involved in promoting it (a few online ads or sponsoredposts could help immensely) before you get going. 3. Work it intoyour workflow Keep in mind the time it will take to run thepromotion. If it depends on curated content, make sure you havetime to review the entries on a regular basis. Shameless plug:Simply Measured can help you track all submissions on a weekly ordaily basis (or however often you want). Want to test it out? Startyour free trial.

You may also be required to track entries and metrics via GoogleAnalytics or in your marketing automation system to determine webtraffic, leads generated and conversions (aka the good stuff). Gethelp if you need to and make sure you give yourself enough leewaybefore the contest launch. Contests take more time than you think,and your audience will be expecting a well-run promotion.

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4. Choose your social network appropriately You can runpromotions on just about any social channel (weve outlined a few ofthe more popular ones below). Your choice will depend on yourtarget audience, existing or desired user base (promotions are agood way to attract people to a new page or channel), goals, andchannel-specific rules (some sites wont let you run certain typesof promotions). Performing audience analyses before youre ready torun your promotion is key to figuring out which channel(s) tochoose. Dont have a tool to help you analyze your current ordesired audience? We can help you with that. Start a freetrial.

Facebook If youre looking for simple engagement, Facebookpromotions are wonderful. Users can enter your sweepstakes byliking your status, posting something to your wall, or sending youa private message. Facebook is also popular for photo contests andother promotions designed to generate user-created content. You canalso easily attract users to your landing page or website byenabling them to sign up using their Facebook account. TwitterThough Twitter is also great for photo contests, its ideal forgathering short (140 character) testimonials or stories. You canalso use Twitter for trivia contests and other promotions thatrequire a succinct but creative response. And even if you dont runyour promotions on Twitter, you should definitely promote them onyour account. Pinterest Want to encourage visitors to your website?Encourage them to pin items to win a prize (just dont call it PinIt to Win It, per their rules). The nice thing about Pinterest isthat pinned items stay there until the user takes them down, soyour promotion can continue to drive traffic and engagement longafter the deadline has passed.

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5. Cross-promote If your goal is to grow your Pinterest audienceand you already have a huge Facebook following, definitely leverageyour Facebook to drive traffic to the Pinterest promotion. Post thedetails to your page with a link directing users to the contest,and consider running a few Facebook ad campaigns. Be careful howyou position it though, because sometimes users arent receptive topromotions for one social channel on another.

Leverage your most active channels, which are typically yourwebsite, blog and email list. You might also want to run ads onsearch engines or other sites where your users congregate, or evenon TV, in print, or via traditional marketing media, likeradio.

Use a single hashtag across multiple networks to tie yourpromoted efforts into one campaign, so you can gauge success acrossall channels. 6. Make activity easy to track Create uniquehashtags, tracking tokens and/or URLs and require the entrants touse them in order to be considered. This will help you filterentries and chat about the contest, and make it easier to identifycustomers who entered your marketing funnel through thepromotion.

Again, be organized at the get-go, and it will be easier to seeyour results. A successful promotion means lots of data to track,organize and report on. Make sure you have the entire workflow setup and tested before you launch, so you know what data yourereceiving on your end from the entrants, and how youll organizeit.

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7. Post-contest analytics Since you already established whichmetrics youll want to measure, reporting should be a cakewalk. Pulldown all the data and see how well you did. More importantly, whatcan you learn? If you plan more promotions in the future, you canuse this information to hone your strategy. You should also have aplan in place for leveraging user-generated content. Perhaps youcan create a gallery of runners-up after the winning entries areannounced? Or even post them individually on a daily or weeklybasis. This can help improve engagement in the long term, is agreat way to repurpose great (free!) content, continue the momentumand nurture a sense of community among your expanded fan base.

8. Prize fulfillment and delivery Youre not quite done! Dontforget your end of the bargain prize fulfillment. If you get thiswrong, you may hurt your chances of running a successful contest inthe future, or even damage your brand. Depending on the size of theprize, its very easy to underestimate how much time and effort itcan take to make sure your winner(s) receive their prizes. Makesure you consult your legal team, because depending on the prizesize, state and federal tax laws may apply.

Capture any winner information youll need name, address, phonenumber, email, age (if prize is age-restricted, such as avacation), etc. Also make sure you can deliver the prize in atimely manner not several months after the contest ends.

Keep in mind that delivering prizes provides you with an addedopportunity to connect with delighted fans, and an avenue todevelop additional content that you can distribute to yourcommunity later on.

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Contests and sweepstakes take a little extra planning andgroundwork, but executed correctly, they can provide an immediateand lasting boost to your company. Remember to follow all the lawsand rules, design a promotion around metrics you want toaccomplish, carve out a budget and allocate resources, and be sureto measure and track before, during and after so you can determineROI and gain insight for your next promotion. Where do you standwith your user engagement? Simply Measured offers powerfulanalytics to help you see what your audience is doing on social,and what type of contest or sweepstakes might spark their interest.Request your free trial.

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CONCLUSION

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