Run a Successful Social Media Contest

Contests are a great way for businesses to increase engagement and gain leads. Hosting one on social media is even better. With so many ways to engage, share, and make your contest viral, social media is the perfect place to host your next contest. Follow the tips below and you will be on your way to a successful social media contest!

Choose a Primary Network to Host the Contest With

It’s important to avoid confusion as much as possible when hosting a contest on social media. One way to avoid chaos and having to answer several of the same questions is by hosting the contest on one social network. Promoting the contest across all networks is recommended, and necessary for a successful contest, as long as it doesn’t require users to enter on each network. Additional entires for sharing on additional networks is a plus, but shouldn’t be one of the required steps.

I like to host contests for my clients on their Facebook page using third party apps. Facebook is usually a client’s most engaged social network and has great options for paid promotion. Once the contest is setup and paid promotion has begun on Facebook, I’ll share the contest and it’s details on the client’s other networks: Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, etc. The other networks help spread the word while increasing entries using their other fanbase.

Choose What Part of the Contest to Share on Which Network

As we discussed above, just because a contest is hosted on one network, doesn’t mean it can’t be shared on others. For example, Pinterest and Instagram are the best networks to share captivating contest images with short image descriptions, usually informing users how to enter and what the prize is. Use image tools likePicmonkey to easily add text over contest images, either explaining steps, the contest title/prize, or how to enter.

Twitter is a great opportunity to share a quick update on how many entries you’ve received so far and how many days left to enter. A contest hashtag is a must. Each tweet, and pretty much every social post, has to include the contest hashtag so users can easily follow along.

Regardless of where you are sharing details, make sure to maintain branding and similarity in all of the images and copy you use. With so many contests posted daily on social networks, you want your contest to stand out from the rest, while being known with it’s brand.

Choose a Third Party App

A third party app is going to be the easiest, and smoothest, way to run a contest on social media. Create different contest tabs on a client’s Facebook Page using tools like Woobox and Rafflecopter. You can also direct traffic from social networks to a specific landing page using a third party app that collects and organizes entries. Some apps will even choose the winner for you by the amount of entry points per person or at random. These third party apps are some of the most commonly contest apps: Woobox, Rafflecopter, Votigo, Wildfire App, PromoSimple and Giveaway Tool.

Create Simple Steps to Follow

The steps to a contest give direction and fluidity to how a person can enter. A photo or video contest will have minimal steps:

1. Take a photo/video
2. Hashtag it #contesthashtag
3. Share it!

Having too many steps in a contest immediately discourages users and shouts “Too much work!”. The least amount of steps you have to enter a contest, the more entries it will receive. Over and over again I’ll see contests on Instagram that have too many steps, or overly complicated steps, for a social network that strives on the two simple acts of “tapping” and “tagging”.

1. Like these 5 Instagram users
2. Re-post this image
3. Hashtag #awesomecontest on the images
4. Tag 4 friends you want to bring with you

Simplify and clarify your steps. It will increase the contest and brand visibility while gaining more entries than you know what to do with. Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Clarify Any Required Rules and Legalities

Rules are different then steps, and very important to contests and their host. Rules set boundaries that protect the company throwing the contest, as well as give users a full understanding of what to expect. The rules to a contest should also be simple and easily understood.

To protect yourself, and the client, you’ll want to include a set of legalities in the rules section. Depending upon the clientele and type of contest it may be beneficial to work with a lawyer to develop the official contests’ rules and regulations. The NBA did a great job, most likely with paid legal guidance, to develop this set of contest rules for the Warriors contest. #Curry

Image Source: Total Pro Sports

Obey The Social Network’s Rules

Each social network has their own rules to obey. Facebook is a big one. It’s terms are fairly lengthy, and were recently updated in January. Scroll down to “Section E” to read all of Facebook’s requirements for Promotions, also known as contests or sweepstakes. Other than lawfully being responsible, you must include the official rules, eligibility requirements, and any necessary regulatory approvals if your contest is hosted on Facebook. You also want to release Facebook by each entrant or participant and clarify that Facebook is in no way sponsoring, endorsing, administrating, or caring about your contest.

Other than the basic legality rules, any Facebook Page can host a contest. You just can’t ask for the contest to be shared by users on their personal Timelines for entries. For example, this step would be violating Facebook’s rules:

#4: Share this post on 5 of your friend’s Facebook Timeline for an additional 2 points.

Decide How You’re Going to Choose a Winner Ahead of Time

Running a social media contest can be a little hectic and unorganized at first. Part of creating a seamless experience is by planning everything ahead of time. Deciding who’s going to choose a winner is one of those important steps to conquer prior to the launch. Is the agency going to pick a winner or is the client? Do you want your boss to have a say in it, or just the marketing team? Make it clear in the beginning so once the contest is over the designated person can quickly choose and announce a winner.

Generate Leads From the Contest

Most contests should have some sort of form or required information to submit as part of the rule. This is a great way to add to your contact list and generate leads. These entries may turn into potential customers next week, in a month, or even a year from now, all from one contest ran on social media.

Does Your Demographic Want to Win the Contest?

The main reason for hosting a contest is to get new leads, drive traffic, and increase engagement. In order to achieve those goals, you need to make sure you’re offering something your demographic actually wants.

Image Source: Anaya

If your client sells shoes and they host a contest offering a $50 giftcard to Victoria’s Secrets, what are they telling their audience? Not only are they pushing them to go to another store, but a store that doesn’t even sell shoes (well, mostly). The prize needs to have a direct correlation with the brand.

A pair of shoes valued at $50 or a choice of one of the newest sandals from the summer collection would be a more effective prize. Each entry received means that person actually wants to win a new pair of your client’s shoes, they like them. This data can help you launch products in the future based on which contest prizes were the most successful, by which prizes received the most entries.

Tips For Hosting a Contest on Facebook

• Use Facebook Ads. Advertising on Facebook is just about the only way to get your audience to see your posts, especially when it comes to contests on Facebook. Promoted Posts are a great way to increase the contest’s visibility, as well as engagement. Create several posts introducing the contest, and then promote these posts using Facebook Ads to encourage users to enter. Website Clicks is another great Facebook Ad that will push traffic from Facebook to the contest landing page.
• Share entries on the Facebook Page. If you or your client is having an image or video based contest you can share the images and videos you receive on Facebook. This will encourage other users to enter by giving them an idea of what people have done so far, as well as inspire new ideas for entry.

Tips For Hosting a Contest on Instagram

• Encourage hashtags and reposts. The best way to get engagement with a contest on Instagram is by having user engagement. Creating a contest-specific hashtag will give users a feed to follow and track the progress of entries. Reposts increase your potential entry base, while automatically adding additional eyes on the brand.

• Time the Contest Perfectly. Create your contest around upcoming events, holidays, and/or seasons. This adds a fun and unique way to add relevance to a contest and even more hashtags to choose from on Instagram.

Tips For Hosting a Contest on Pinterest

• Send Pinners for a whirl. Work with sponsors of the contest or local business partners to spread the word about the contest by making their Pinterest page one of the steps to enter. This will send users on a hunt from Pinterest page to Pinterest page, meeting allied businesses and Pinners along the way.
• Create a New Pinterest Board for Entries. Encourage users to make their own board sharing images that represent the contest, while using the hashtag on each pin. This alerts their followers of a new board, increasing visibility, and adds additional pins to the hashtag.

Tips For Hosting a Contest on Twitter

• #Contest. Including #contest or #sweepstakes in your contest tweets will improve it’s visibility tremendously. People who regularly enter in #contests check the contest hashtag frequently, scrolling through the feed until they find a contest or prize that relates to them.
• Track the Engagement. Using social media monitoring tools like Sprout Social or SocialBro track how many @ mentions, favorites, retweets, and favorites each contest tweet receives.

Have you hosted a contest on social media before? What were your results like? Comment below!

Respond to Negative Feedback Online

As a business owner, I understand how much it hurts when someone doesn’t appreciate your business or your employee’s hardwork. No matter how hard you try to always put your best foot forward, there will always be someone who has something negative to say about your business. The accessibility and ease of the Internet encourages such critics to express their opinions even more, resulting in a constant online battlefield for business owners. This is especially true since bad reviews can result in decreased revenue and rankings.

Image Source: Search Engine Land

Last year, 72% of people in a BrightLocal survey said positive customer reviews encouraged their trust with a business. Talk about a majority! When it comes to rankings, Google Maps tends to populate local results based on reviews. If a business is suffering from bad reviews, their local rankings may be suffering as well. It gets even worse when it comes to mobile. Review counts and average ratings are used to help sort results on mobile search.

Let’s combat the negativity online by reinforcing the positives of a business and following these steps when hit with a bad review.

Have a Plan of Action

Social networks and review sites like Facebook and Yelp have become a starting point for consumers. Before choosing their next Thai restaurant or picking the right plumber, a majority of people are searching online first. Bad reviews will hinder the chance of them choosing one company over the other, hurting the reputation and ultimately revenue. In order to be efficient, it’s important to plan ahead, knowing at any moment your business can get hit with a bad online review.

Plan of Action:

1. Decide who is going to respond. Do you have a specific person who can manage reviews? Designate someone who is in charge of handling feedback. This will help avoid chaos and create timely responses.
2. What kind of review is it? Generic, spam, disgruntled customer, business competitor, etc. Diagnose what kind of review it is and what type of response would fit best. If you notice you’re being hit with several spammy reviews, blocking that person or reporting them to the social network or review site may be in order. Whereas a disgruntled customer review needs extra special attention and a personalized response.
3. Keep track of the data. Create a review log and add the new reviews to it. Notate all of the info: who the person is, date/time, star count, where the review was posted, who responded, how the response was made, what kind of response, etc.
4. Scan across the board for patterns. Check all social networks and review sites to see if the same review was posted elsewhere. If it was crossposted on multiple sites, reply accordingly so you’re still responding to each review. After you have resolved the issue with the customer, you can reach out and ask them to remove the multiple reviews, helping salvage your reputation on each website.

Image Source: Search Engine Land

How to Avoid Being Generic

The key to a proper response is by personalizing the message. Copying and pasting the same automated reply will be noticed by multiple users. Noticing several of the same automated responses takes the humanization out of a business and shows little to no respect for the customer’s concerns. Customize each response so it is slightly different than the last, leaving a name and contact information to be reached at.

When to Bring Management In

It’s important to step back when responding to bad reviews and look at the bigger picture. Is this issue something management needs to be aware of? Is there still an opportunity to salvage the relationship by offering them something in return? If so, respond with an email address and phone number so the customer can communicate directly to management.

Image Source: Infusionsoft

As a customer, when a business or employee upsets you the first thing you want to do is talk to someone superior about the experience. That’s why it’s important to explain in the response how apologetic managementis and how much they want to make the situation right.

Insider Tip: Instead of publicly explaining what free offers you’re about to bribe them with, share those types of details personally over the phone or in an email. If others see how many free coupons you hand out with each complaint, you’ll start to receive a lot more complaints and have a lot less free coupons available.

Drinking Haterade is Contagious

One bad review can inspire others to share their not-so-pleasant experiences and point out certain things they wouldn’t have noticed before. If you start to notice several bad reviews popping up in a small time period, release a new sweepstakes or contest to encourage your fans to share their positive experiences. This will help filter through some of the bad reviews, as well as increase engagement on your social networks and website. Offer a prize or free coupons so your fans have an incentive and want to share their great experiences.

A one-star increase in Yelp rating leads to a 5-9% increase in revenue. Therefore, each positive review can help combat the negatives.

Don’t Pretend Like it Didn’t Happen

Unfortunately, ignoring reviews won’t make them go away. If anything, it might make more reviews appear. A responsible business needs to meet each of its customers needs, including responding to negative feedback. No matter how it makes you feel as a business owner, your customers need to know that you’re willing to do what it takes to make things right, that you care about their experience.

Take Advantage of Every Opportunity

Use bad comments and reviews as a chance to display how proud of your business you are, how long you’ve been in business, and the significance of each customer. Flip the negativity upside down and use it as an opportunity to change their mind about your business, while talking them into giving you a second chance.

Have you been hit with a review you couldn’t recover from? Tell us about your experience in the comments below!

Improved Keyword Difficulty in Rank Tracker

Improved Keyword Difficulty in Rank Tracker
Uncover easy-to-rank-for keywords and get better, quicker SEO results

Keywords aren't created equal. Getting ranked for some can take a few on-page tweaks, while others require months of work — and the efforts may never pay back. That's why you need to focus your SEO on cost-effective keywords that aren't too hard to rank for.

But how do you find those? With the help of Rank Tracker's Keyword Difficulty — it just got enhanced with new features for even better and quicker SEO results:

1 Compare your page's SEO stats with top competitors in the Keyword Difficulty view

2 Sort keywords by their Difficulty score and export the data (with the Keyword Difficulty column now available in your main workspace)

3 Match keywords with specific landing pages right in Rank Tracker's main view

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What's Keyword Difficulty?

Rank Tracker's Keyword Difficulty shows you exactly how hard it's going to be to rank in top 10 results for any given keyword in the search engine of your choice. The metric can save you lots of time and trouble — in combination with search volume, Keyword Difficulty gives you priceless insight into keywords that are sure to bring you organic visits while being relatively easy to rank for.

To calculate Keyword Difficulty, Rank Tracker analyzes 10 top ranking pages for the keyword in question against a wealth of important SEO factors. Here are some of the factors used:

• Page PageRank/Moz's PA
• Domain PageRank/Moz's DA
• Number of sites that link to page
• Number of sites that link to domain
• On-page optimization rate
• Alexa Rank
• Social signals
• Page age

Based on these factors, Rank Tracker shows you exactly how hard it's going to be to outrank each individual competitor in the top 10, and an overall Difficulty score for the keyword.

What's new?

1. Compare your page's SEO stats with top ranking competitors

The latest Rank Tracker update lets you compare your landing pages to those of top 10 ranking pages for each keyword. This way, you can easily identify areas you need to focus on and measure your page's key SEO factors against those of your best-performing competition.

How-To:

1. Open a Rank Tracker project.
2. Select a keyword, and switch to the Keyword Difficulty tab in Rank Tracker's lower screen.
3. To calculate Keyword Difficulty, simply hit .

In a moment, under the list of your 10 top ranking competitors, you'll see your website's page that ranks for the keyword in the selected search engine. If you have a specific landing page set for that keyword using the Match Keywords to URLs option (if applicable), you will also see it in the table.

If there's a big gap between competitors and your page for certain SEO factors, these are the areas you need to work on in the first place.

Tip: Use the Manual on On-page Optimization to improve your page's optimization rate, and refer to our A-Z Guide to Link Building to grow the number of quality links to your landing page and domain.

2. See Keyword Difficulty in Rank Tracker's main view (and sort keywords by it)

The new Rank Tracker gives you all the important keyword stats in the app's main view, including a Keyword Difficulty column for each target search engine — so that you can sort your keywords by it or easily cope the data to a spreadsheet.

How-To:

1. Right-click the header of any column in Rank Tracker to access your workspace settings.
2. Select Keyword Difficulty for a target search engine from the list of columns on the left.
3. Double-click the factor to add it to visible columns.
4. Click OK, and the column will be added to your workspace right away.

If the Difficulty score hasn't yet been calculated for some of your keywords, just hover the mouse over the cell and hit  to update the value.

3. Easily match keywords with landing pages

Rank Tracker offers an option of creating keyword to URL matches so that you can track the performance of a particular keyword-targeted landing page in search results, and get instantly notified if a different page shows up in the SERPs for any of your keywords. And with the latest update, you can now create keyword to URL matches right in the app's main view — now all it takes is a click of a button!

How-To:

1. Just hit the  button in the URL found column to match your keyword a landing page.
2. Now if a wrong page is found in search results instead of your landing page, you'll see the icon in the URL found column.

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