Christmas and the new year are coming soon, which is a good time for contest mechanics in Instagram, Facebook & YouTube. I‘ve held dozens of different contests in different projects and in different social networks myself. Today, I will share my experience.
The joy of one man’s victory is accompanied by the disappointment of another man‘s defeat.
You are holding a contest, offering valuable prizes. One person wins and celebrates. The rest wanted to win, looked forward to the joy of receiving a prize, tried, waited … and then lost. And in their defeat – psychologically – YOU are to blame. You didn’t choose THEM. You offended them. They‘ve now lost interest in you and your project.
Especially if a creative approach is required to participate in the competition, something to draw and create, you can really offend people here. Consider this before holding any competitions: the more desirable the prize and the more difficult the conditions, the more disappointing it could be at the end.
🍫 Simplify the conditions to participate as much as possible. Not only to reduce the resentment, but also to get more people involved. Less hassle and calories burned at the beginning of the competition means more participants.
The ideal condition for Instagram is a comment and a share to stories. It‘s better not to set the condition to tag a friend. Those tagged will simply ignore the post or will be annoyed.
For YouTube, the best condition is a meaningful comment. Comments in general help promote the video, but those comments that are repetitive or too short won’t count. Ask them to tell you something, come up with a name for the movie, and so on.
For Facebook – share a post. In Facebook you can see who shared, so you can also hold contests among these people.
In TikTok, much like in YouTube, comments work well. Contests can be held similarly to YouTube.
🍫 Make two types of prizes. One for the super finalist, the second one for everyone.
This will also reduce the pain of disappointment (note that this is how most lotteries are arranged – one super prize and many small gifts).
Mini-prizes will also increase the number of participants. Not everyone believes they will win the super prize, but many will be happy about a small present.
For information products, a guaranteed prize can be a guide or a link to a lesson (in response to a repost or tag in stories).
For food – promotional codes and gift samples.
For goods – a gift with an order up to 50 £.
For services, see for yourself. It‘s highly niche dependent. The main thing is to make it easy to give a thousand prize pieces for a condition.