Facebook Contests: How to Get Your Fans Excited

Have you ever run a Facebook contest?

Are you wondering if you should use them for your business?

To learn about Facebook contests, I interview Andrea Vahl for this episode of the Social Media Marketing podcast.
More About This Show

The Social Media Marketing podcast is a show from Social Media Examiner.

It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

The show format is on-demand talk radio (also known as podcasting).

In this episode, I interview Andrea Vahl, co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies. She regularly writes about Facebook for Social Media Examiner (in fact she was our community manager for 2 years), and has an alter-ego known online as Grandma Mary.

Andrea shares how a Facebook contest can work for your page and your business.

You'll learn about the different contests available and what contest apps to use.

Share your feedback, read the show notes and get the links mentioned in this episode below!
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Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show:
Facebook Contests
Why should businesses run contests on Facebook?

When it comes to what contests can do for your Facebook page and your business, Andrea is a contest fan girl.

There are many benefits of running a contest and Andrea's top three follow. You'll hear the benefits of each and the best types of prizes to give away.

Help grow the likes on your page and your Facebook presence
Grow your email list
Help promote a product you're selling

Listen to the show to find out how we did a photo contest called Help Me Launch.

Examples of successful contests

Andrea shares a few success stories with Facebook contests and what range of prizes can develop good success.

Andrea helped set up a contest for a client on Facebook called Chocolate for Breakfast. It was a contest where the giveaway was a small box of premium chocolate truffles.

The contest was run for one week. From this, the client got 700 new fans and 400 email addresses. At the time, the page was at the early stages with around 1200 fans. So for the cost of the premium box of chocolates, the client got a huge response.

The contest was on the client's Facebook tab (like you're supposed to do), and it required people to like the page to enter.

Discover how a contest on a tab works and what information people need to enter to participate.

It was a sweepstakes contest where you didn't have to enter any photos, essay or video. It was a random-draw winner with anyone eligible to win.

You'll hear how it was promoted and the frequency of the posts.

Another client of Andrea's, Camp Bow Wow, did a contest called Bad to the Bone. They're a doggy daycare facility and also have home buddies dog training courses that they give away.

This contest encouraged people to submit pictures of their bad dogs. People would then vote on who was the baddest dog. The winner would get a free year of dog training lessons, which was a great prize.

Hear how this contest was run over a couple of stages and why it lasted about a year.

It was a huge success, with over 15,000 new fans.

Andrea encourages people to think about how you can piggyback on different techniques that have worked well. Create some fun around the contest and engage with your audience.

A bigger brand that ran a contest was Eggo. They did a Waffle-Off, which encouraged people to submit recipes with Eggo waffles.

People would submit recipes and show you the various ways to enjoy Eggo waffles.

It was user-generated content and photos. People were very engaged with the contest. It was easy to set up and it took off for Eggo.

You'll discover why there might be less participation if it involves the need to enter a photo or a movie.

If you want to start your first contest, Andrea advises you to run a sweepstakes type of...