If you’re planning to launch your new business or want to create hype about a new product or service, running a social media competition may be the best option for you. Not only are social media competitions or contests relatively inexpensive to run, but also have the potential to reach a wide audience, particularly if the campaign goes viral (which is like striking gold). Because we are not all experts in running social media competitions, we’ve outlined a few basics.

Create a Plan and Have a Goal

Because social media is ultimately a platform for sharing content with other uses, many marketers assume that any competitions or campaigns will grow organically. However, much effort and creativity is needed to ensure the growth of your marketing idea. Thus as with other business actions, you need to create a solid plan, which will not only help develop your competition but also help measure success. An important part of your social media competition plan is to determine the desired outcome. Do you want to increase your mailing list, drive relevant traffic to your site or draw attention to a new product? Once you have a clear goal in mind, you can plan for appropriate action.

Make Use of Apps

Unless you have the resources to create your own app, enlist the help of a third party to run your social media competition. This will not only be cost effective, but help you comply with the terms of service of different social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. Some also offer a range of tools that will help you engage with your target audience. Binkd Promotion, Wildfire App and Bulbstorm are great for sweepstake, photo and vote to win social media competitions.

Choose the Correct Social Media Platform

Different social platforms are more suitable for different competitions and it is thus important to choose the right one. Starting with Pinterest, this social media platform is ideally suited to photo based contents as it is a visual based site. Common Pinterest social media competitions include ‘pin it to win it’ and photo competitions based around a particular theme. Twitter works well for verbal contests, where contestants need to complete blanks or answer a question. A popular Twitter social media competition is to retweet to win; just ensure that you make use of hashtags. Facebook is extremely versatile and can be used for sweepstakes, photo and video contents, as well as polls and quizes. Just ensure that you abide by their rules, and you should be well on your way to achieving your social media competition goals.