9 Creative Social Media Contest Ideas to Use
A social media contest is an effective way to increase your followers, likes, shares and user engagement. It is also a great way to interact directly with potential clients, ultimately resulting in enhanced customer loyalty. You can also use social media contests to promote your products and services among masses.
But the tricky part is planning a contest, especially if you have never done it before. If you are looking for creative social media contest ideas, you have come to the right place.
In this blog post we will share with you creative social media contest ideas that you can use to boost likes, comments, shares and followings and help generate more engagement on your social media accounts.
Before moving on to social media contest ideas, let’s have a look at why social media contests are important for business.
Benefits of Social media contests:
Social media contests help you:
- Build community
- Incentivize people to follow you
- Build brand awareness
- Increase subscribers
- Boost sales
- Increase user engagement
Continue reading to know 10 creative social media contest ideas to use to generate more engagement on social media platforms.
1. Like and/or comment to win
The “like and/or comment to win” is the tried and tested social media contest to increase user engagement. And the best part about this classic contest technique is that it can be held on almost any social media platform, from Facebook to Instagram to LinkedIn.
All that you have to do is create a post with a detailed caption, clearly explaining the guidelines of the contest. Make sure you clearly mention entry deadline. To spread the contest to a wider audience, share the post in your Facebook and Instagram stories. Use hashtags such as #giveaway, #liketoenter, #commentoenter to increase reach of the contest.
2. Share or Repost to enter
When you combine like and/or comment to win contest with share and repost, you amplify your reach. Ask the followers to share the contest post to Facebook or Instagram Stories to enter the contest. But make sure you act promptly, since you will only have 24 hours to confirm those post shares.
3. Tag a friend contest
To further broaden user engagement, combine the first two contest ideas with a “tag a friend to enter” requirement. When you ask followers to tag a friend, that is technically a comment and a share wrapped into one. This contest creates a ripple effect – a friend tags a friend which further tags a friend – and helps increase engagement and following.
4. Caption the photo competition
A “caption the photo” contest is a fun way to make followers comment on your post and connect with your brand. If you have a limited budget, you can use this type of contest to increase viewership of your products. It is not necessary that you set expensive prizes to run a successful contest. A free shirt, toy, a cosmetic product or anything that your business deals in would do.
5. Best comment contest
You can also prompt followers to comment by involving them in best comment/ or name the product kind of contests. If you are planning to launch a new product, engage users by asking them to name the product and announce a freebie for the winner. If you randomly want to boost user engagement, you can ask them to why they deserve to win a free gift/ voucher.
6. Vote to win contest
Social media users love to have their say. Create a social media post seeking followers’ votes in the comment section. Every vote should count as an entry ticket. You can also create an Instagram Stories poll, with a “Yes or No” option or “This or That” option. You can choose anything important or related to your business and collect followers’ feedback by asking them to vote. This way you will not only get customer feedback to decide on your next move but will also increase user engagement.
Grow your follower count with these tried and tested social media contest ideas.
7. Follow to win
Follow to win is the classic and most straightforward contest to help you grow your follower count. You can combine this social media contest with a “like” request, too. If you wish to make your contest a bit different, don’t set a date as entry deadline. Instead, set a goal of a certain number of followers such as 100 or 500 followers before you draw the winner.
8. Follow and share to enter
A little different version of the previous contest is “follow and share to enter” contest. When your followers share the post, this prompts social media users who are not already following you to hit the follow button. This way you promote your social media account and amply the followers as well. You can also ask the contestants to tag a specific number of friends in the comments to further amply following.
9. Partner with an influencer
If you wish to get an instant boost, partner with a social media influencer. Create a contest that requires entrants to follow your account as well and your influencer partner. It is not necessary that you partner with a social media influencer with millions of followers. Even mid-sized influencers can help you get a good number of followers and some potential leads as well.
Final word!
Remember that millennial lack consistency and determination. So, it is quite common for followers to unfollow. To make sure you don’t lose your followers, it is necessary you keep them engaged by rolling out creative social media contests at least once a month. This way you will have a better chance of earning followers that stay.
If you are looking for an experienced social media agency in Dubai to plan and run the social media contests for you, contact us now and our team will help you design some extremely engaging social media contests that will not only increase client engagement plus also increase your sales.