Facebook contests help to improve engagement with your fans and generate leads. It is a useful strategy for every brand aiming to build an online presence and engage their audience on Facebook and other social media platforms.

To run a Facebook contest, you have to ensure, among other things that you set a goal of what you wish to achieve. Doing this will help you plan how everything turns out.

Here are some useful tips to get you started on your first Facebook contests:

Determine your goals

There are different reasons people use Facebook contest. Some might do it for the more likes while marketers use it as part of their marketing strategies to get more fans, crowdsource for a product launch, increase brand awareness, learn about their audience, get email addresses, etc. You need to know why you are holding this contest then you can plan more effectively.

Target the right audience

After setting your goals, attract the right people that will participate in the contest. The contest shouldn’t be for everyone as it could lose its purpose, which is to generate sales lead.

When you don’t target your audience, you are inviting everyone to participate. Most of the participants would not even want to associate with your brand immediately after the contests, and you end up not generating new leads.

When holding a contest, use information such as demographics to choose who can participate in the competition. Doing this will not only help attract the right people to your brand; it will also determine the kind of game and prize to give the winners. For example, you can choose to run a contest for only women, or men only, or even people from a particular country.

Choose a prize

Choosing a prize that will represent your brand. It’s not all about giving expensive gifts to the participants but ensuring you stay top of their mind. When they see the prizes, they get reminded of your brand. For example, why give out makeup kits as a baker when it should be your cupcakes? Or why

 Moreover, you should also think of something that will be relevant to your target market. If you sell flowers, your contest prize should be something relating to flowers. If you own a restaurant, give out dinner reservations. So also, if you own a movie theatre, giving out movie tickets.

It is easier to connect with your target audience, which could bring about conversion when you showcase your brand through your giveaway prices. People who participate in them will be only those that appreciate your brand.

Choose the type of contest

Facebooks allow three basic types of contests, which are photo contests, refer-a-friend, and giveaways. Each of these contests has a role they play in increasing leads.

The giveaways and photo contest help to increase engagement while refer-a-friend contest generates leads, and increases your search rank. You can decide which competition is of importance to you at the moment.

However, you might want to start from a Facebook giveaway since it’s more straightforward to set up and more accessible than other types of contest. But you should note that when doing a giveaway, it is not mandatory that users must like your page before they participate. But you can ask them to do so as a bonus.

You can try multi-day giveaways where you award new prices to participants every day for a specific number of days. This method works like magic in increasing audience engagement. People will continuously check your page for that period to see if the contest is still running.

With a photo contest, you can ask the participants (which should be your customers) to take a picture of them using your product or the empty jars of your product. These are just suggestions; you can do anything that comes to your mind. But be sure not to request that they buy your product before entering the contest as that would amount to the lottery which is against Facebook contest rules.

You can also use refer-a-friend to get more people to participate in your photo or giveaway contest. To use this method, tell people that they stand more chance to win when they refer to others.

There are other types of contest you will also want to consider using. They are:

• Like to win contests
• Comment to win
• Like and comment to win
• Mad-Libs style contest
• Question and answer contest

These contests come with their own rules depending on what the contest organizer wants to achieve. The like to win contest helps to get more engagement from your audience. You ask people to like your post or videos to enter the contest. Then you randomly pick a winner.

Comment to win is similar to like to win but rather than liking your post; they are commenting to enter the contest. Like and comment to win means people would need to take both actions before entering your contest. Before calling for this kind of competition, ensure your award is attractive.

Mad-Lib style contest is playing a game of fill in the blank space where your Facebook fans answer the questions for a chance to win a prize.

For question and answer contests, you ask questions and expect answers from your fans. This contest type helps you know more about your audience as well as increase engagement.

Decide the rules and regulation

Every Facebook contest you put up should have guidelines and information on how you’ll choose the contest winner. If you want to collect email addresses of your fans, you can ask them to supply it when filling the contest form.

Set a time frame

How long do you want the contest to run? It’s essential to include your time frame alongside the guidelines of the competition so that you don’t have people trying to contact you it ends.

Logically, it’s better to run the contest for say 2-4 weeks to get more engagement and collate enough data you might need for your marketing strategy. If it’s short, you might not be able to get the information required. But make sure it’s not too long, so people do not get disinterested or feel you are spamming their feed.

Make your contest post appealing

Your words and images need to appear in such a way that will appeal to your audience and make them want to enter the contest. Always include a call to action to ensure they enter the competition immediately. If you are going to add a form for them to fill, keep the details short so they don’t lose interest.

Promote your contest

Let your fans know about the competition by posting about it regularly before it begins so that it appears in their field and they look forward to it. You can also use Facebook campaign ads to create more awareness if it’s within your budget.

Notify the winner

When you’ve achieved your aim for the contest, and chosen a winner, ensure you publicly announce the winner.

That’s everything you need to know about running a Facebook contest. You’ll discover more information when you try it out.