Social media is a fantastic tool to connect with customers. Posting compelling content and interacting with people’s responses gives you the ability to build social proof and enable people to know, like, and trust your company. A powerful, but underutilized tool in this area is the contest. Companies should look at using social media contests to get people energized, engage, and ready to share your content. Here are three ways contests will help enhance your social media following:
- Contests Expand Your Reach
Most contesst involve some type of requirement that people share a post in order to be eligible to win. This dramatically extends your reach – because they’re sharing your content, other people in their friend group are seeing it. These people now have exposure to your company, and are also encouraged to share it and further extend its reach. A good contest can greatly enhance the visibility of your company and product, and give you a much larger audience going forward. If you require everybody in the contest to like your page, you’ll increase the amount of engagement you have and give yourself a larger audience for future posts.
- Contests Excite Customers
Who doesn’t want to win free stuff?! When customers think your page will give them a chance to win something exciting, they’ll stay engaged with you and be prepared to jump into any giveaways you do in the future. There are many ways to keep followers engaged with what you’re doing on social media, but few are going to get them as excited as these opportunities to win something. After the contest is over you can use this excitement to continue to promote your product and keep people excited about what you’re sharing
- Contests Give You Content to Share
Coming up with content for social media can be a challenge. Business owners and social media professionals are busy, and it can be hard to come up with a steady stream of content. Contests can help solve that problem. If you ask people to share something like a picture or a video, you can share the top entries. This both gives you an item to share and gives contestants something else to get excited for. Even if somebody doesn’t win your contest, they have at least been acknowledged for sharing something interesting.
If you want to get followers engaged and expand your reach, contests are a great idea. If you can tailor them to your business and come up with an exciting prize, your company will reap the benefits.
Need help getting a contest started? We’re here to help! Get in touch with us about our social media coaching programs, and we can help design the perfect contest for your business.