Although Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are the current media darlings, they are not the only game in town. An online contest to spread the word about your product or service is an incredibly effective tool when it comes to social media marketing and is a necessary part of any serious advertising toolkit.
Combine your online contest with attractive prizes, using these social media darlings through word of mouth techniques, and you are creating an explosive viral phenomena.
The term Viral in techno speak is real, with technology wiring our planet to create a global village, a virtual world where everyone is talking to everyone through cyberspace, exploding friendships at dizzying speeds.
Global Friendship is now spreading through smart phones, ipods, ipads,xbox and laptops, using social media writing on walls, tweets, retweets and linking the world over and over. A world where a billion friends are the objective, and millions of followers and friends are possible.
This contagion is a worldwide pandemic of unlimited proportions, and word of mouth is an unstoppable virus that touches off an invisible yet explosive flurry of activity that transforms into huge buying power.
A very good method of using social media in promoting your contests to win prizes is a powerful marketing technique, and needs to be in each and every promotion campaign. Interactive Contests that require participation from contestants create an extraordinary viral powerhouse.
A study shows that 50% of all of users on-line participate in a sweepstake at a minimum of once a month, while 80% of users participate at least once a year in a contest.
Contests and sweepstakes are quite comparable. The only difference is contest are interactive and sweepstakes are passive, and winners chosen randomly
Your objective is to use social media marketing to promote your contest or sweepstakes and build publicity through each contestant refer a friend. Your secondary goals must include gathering contacts, and following your site visits by educating each participant the value of your product and service.
Contest Forms must be kept simple, therefore asking for an email address keeps it extremely easy for every contestant. One of the simplest entry forms can be seen here at itellafriend.com.
It is ethical to only require more contact information from winners, so you can deliver their prizes to them.
The focus of your contest must be designed for participants to return repeatedly to your website, and therefore increase your visibility for your product and service.
Keep in mind that forcing your visitors to obtain something so they can participate is not allowed. Also you are not allowed to incentivize the contest in any way.
You want as many participants in your contest, so it is a good thing to plan extra marketing and promotion so you bring the maximum number of contestants into your contest to win prizes online.