Category: Social Media

How to Contact Winners in Social Media Contests

Running a promotion on Twitter or Instagram or other social platform is fairly easy. You basically follow the social platform guidelines, post rules, collect entries and select winners from valid posts or tweets or pins. The hard part can be contacting and clearing winners. In a traditional contest where a form is used to collect data you typically collect address and phone or email so contacting winners is easy.

February 23, 2016

How to Prevent Contest Voting Fraud

Eric Grimm, former Senior Programmer, wrote this piece about voting fraud — and how to stop it. Online contests are all the rage with the kids these days. After the initial entries are judged, frequently the finalists’ submissions are opened up for voting by the public at large to determine a final winner. If the prize is tantalizing enough, this creates a rather large target for voter fraud. This

January 19, 2016

Things To Consider When Working With A Celebrity — Risky Or Rewarding?

Rosemary Stein, VP from our Chicago office, wrote this piece for MK on what to consider when you want to run a promotion that involves a celebrity. There are advantages and disadvantages to using celebrities in your promotions. Athletes, actors and musicians can influence purchase especially when they align themselves with a product that is relevant to the brand’s target demographic. Very popular celebs can appeal to a broader

January 15, 2016

50 Reasons to Run a Sweepstakes or Contest

Looking for a reason to run a sweepstakes, contest, instant win game, rewards program or loyalty campaign? Here are 50 of them! To create an email opt-in list. To create a mobile opt-in list. To give away your products. To build your brand. To encourage brand loyalty. To encourage product try-on. To encourage product usage. To encourage product trial. To reward your loyal customers. To introduce your customers to

November 4, 2015

If You Build It, Will They Come?

So you launched a Sweepstakes or Contest yet no one is entering. While there could be multiple factors for this lack of consumer response, the first thing to check is your media plan. If you do not promote your own Sweepstakes or Contests, chances are no one else will. You must use media to drive awareness and traffic to your website or Facebook page. Here are some examples of

July 7, 2015

Taming Your #Sweeps with Instagram Promotion Guidelines

Once upon a time, Instagram had no formal promotion guidelines. And it was like the wild, wild west in promotion land, just like on Pinterest and Facebook and Twitter a few years ago before there were rules. Brands did whatever they wanted. Hashtags were untamed and unfiltered, and people wildly tagged anyone and everyone in their posts for fun. Until the law came to town to clean Instagram up. #TheresANewSheriffInTown

February 10, 2015

Run a Sweepstakes to Make Small Business Saturday A Big Win

Five years ago American Express started promoting a new concept: Small Business Saturday. The idea is simple: consumers are asked to spend their holiday shopping dollars locally at small businesses, and American Express provides incentives to those shoppers. In just those five years, the concept of shopping locally the day after Black Friday has become a holiday tradition. So how can your small business make this the best Small

November 7, 2014

Setting the Bar: Quality vs. Quantity of User Generated Content (UGC) Contests

There is no short answer on how to get your customers to create a lot of quality user generated content (UGC). But what we see over and over again in our client promotions is that if the bar is set too high, you may only get a few entries. Set it too low, you may get a ton of entries but not a lot of quality or even eligible, entries.

September 11, 2014

7 Restrictions to Include in Your Next Contest

We have seen many a contest go awry because the sponsor did not put a few safeguard in the official rules to protect themselves. Here is our short list of restrictions you should have in place: Don’t allow copyrighted materials. That means no music, copy or images of anything that isn’t original. And sometimes you have to further spell it out in the FAQs – no trademarks on your

September 9, 2014