Who doesn’t like winning prizes and contests? Increase your social media engagements with this fun idea!

Friday: Everson’s High-P Fridays FROM THE DESK OF MILES EVERSON: In today’s digital landscape, it’s hard to establish a strong presence without venturing into social media. A lot of people around the world are connected by the Internet nowadays. Because of that, social media marketing has become one of the most used strategies to advertise a brand or an independent career. As someone who’s been in the business industry for quite a long time now, I’ve noticed one social media marketing tactic that a lot of people are using: Online contests! Continue reading to learn more about why this strategy is an appealing and engaging way to promote yourself or your brand. CEO, MBO Partners Chairman of the Advisory Board, The I Institute

Who doesn’t like winning prizes and contests? Increase your social media engagements with this fun idea! For business owners, marketers, and independents, social media has become one of their marketing tools as a lot of their target market are also active in this platform. Aside from putting up ads on these platforms, they reach their target market and boost their online visibility by… Creating a social media contest! One way to achieve a successful social media marketing plan is to get your target market or clients to engage with your brand. Getting them pumped up with your creative contest ideas and giveaways is one of the ways to do that! Here are benefits of running social media contests: It increases your social media followers. Simply having a social media account isn’t enough. You also need to build a large list of followers to establish your online authority. A huge social media following is a form of social proof. When a non-follower checks your page and sees that it has a lot of followers, he or she will acknowledge your credibility. In your social media contest, you can ask people to follow your social media accounts as a way of gaining entry. This increases the number of people that are getting exposed to your content.   It generates brand awareness. When people like, comment, and share your content, you are reaching a larger market. People who might not have encountered you before may learn about you after seeing your contest. Aside from just asking people to follow your social media accounts, you can further instruct them to share your content and encourage others to join as well. This can increase your online visibility. You can also collaborate with other brands, influencers, or fellow professionals for a combined and much larger market reach!   It jumpstarts your business engagements. Social media contests are a great way to create buzz around your business and get people to engage with your content. This brings more attention and gets a lot of people talking about your business online. Since the nature of a social media contest involves a lot of sharing, liking, and commenting, you can expect a boost in your engagement rate as more people interact with your brand. This can also attract more people to visit your page and increase your web traffic. However, you shouldn’t rely on social media contests alone. If you want to keep your engagement rate up, you should also consistently make interesting content for your target market. The more that your target market sees your business as relevant to their demands, the more they will stick around to see what goes on in your business page.   It is a good source of consumer data. Participants in your social media contest can provide you with the consumer information you need to make your business more appealing to your target market. This can be achieved by including questions on your social media contest about their habits and interests. You can also use this information for your email marketing efforts in the future. Let’s see how these two businesses used social media contests to extend their target market reach: Starbucks’ #RedCupContest Starbucks created this contest in 2014 and 2015, challenging its Instagram followers to design their own red cup and upload it on their account. Starbucks asked participants to use the #RedCupContest as part of their caption for the photo as well as to tag Starbucks’ Instagram account. Selected followers would receive a prize and their self-designed red cups would be used and reproduced by the company for the Christmas season. The first two days of the contest saw people uploading photos of their red cups every 14 seconds. Starbucks received a total of 40,000 entries in their contest. Aside from that, the photos uploaded by Starbucks’ Instagram followers also got shared by their friends and followers, giving the company’s brand visibility a massive boost. Chaguaramas Amusement Park In the summer of 2016, the Chaguaramas Amusement Park in Trinidad and Tobago was preparing for its grand opening. The problem? It was just a new amusement park and it didn’t have an official name yet. The park’s marketing team decided to run a social media contest on Facebook that encouraged Facebook users to suggest a name for the park. The winner would get a free year’s worth of entry to the park for a family of four. Aside from that, he or she would also receive TTD 10,000 as a cash prize! The contest attracted over 3,000 entries. That meant although only one could win, more than 3,000 people were now aware that a new amusement park is opening soon. A number of visits from all those people who joined the contest (and others who simply encountered the brand online because of the contest) would contribute to the park being able to more quickly generate returns on its investments. Social media contests, when executed properly, can be a really good way to increase brand awareness among your target market. This can also be a fun way to engage with them! So, squeeze your creative juices and plan the most suitable social media contest for your business. Let your target market do the marketing for you too as they interact with your brand and contest. Hope you’ve found this week’s insights interesting and helpful. Follow us on LinkedIn. Stay tuned for next Friday’s Everson’s High-P Fridays! 'To break the rules, you must first master them...' Learn more about the advantages of first mastering the rules before breaking them on next week’s Everson’s High-P Fridays!>