Those of us who operate Facebook pages know just how difficult it can be to increase the level of participation, discussion and reach of our pages. One of the best ways in which to augment a page’s influence and activity is through the use contests, many of which offer tangible prizes or gift cards to encourage followers to be active and consistently on your page. Unfortunately, not all contest tactics work equally and a few wrong moves can spell disaster for any contest or campaign. In the following article, we will discuss four ways that you can ensure success for your next Facebook contest and build brand awareness in the process.

Know Your Purpose

Too many Facebook page administrators become so excited at the prospect of a contest that they forget to consider the smaller details. What exactly is your brand seeking to achieve from this contest? Do you need more followers? Are you looking for users to be pinging URLs to your Facebook page via their status feeds? Are you seeking increased brand awareness? Whatever the motivation, you will need to understand the goals of the contest before any online action is taken. Those who fail to consider the purpose and goals of the campaign will ultimately see their contests fail as well.

Select an Appropriate Prize

If your brand deals with a tangible product, then it only makes sense to offer one or some of your products as the contest prize. If you do not manufacture or distribute tangible products, however, then it is important to consider an appropriate prize (i.e.: context). A brand that provides travel reservations may choose to offer a gift card or travel-related accessories as prizes; they would not be as successful in their contest if they chose to offer a set of patio furniture, for instance. Prizes must also be desirable in order to have a positive effect for the brand’s page, as nobody wants a useless gadget or accessory.

Advertise

Once your contest is created, you may find that interaction among your followers has increased, but what about new opportunities to reach untapped audiences? When you create an advertising campaign on Facebook to correspond with your contest, you can reach new audiences by pinging URLs to your page and giving them a more valuable reason to visit it. While a simple text and image ad may suffice in some cases, a contest or similar promotion provides incentive to interested parties and may make the difference between a conversion and your ad being ignored.

Be Aware of Guidelines

Facebook advertising and contest events must be carefully considered in order to fall in line with the variety of rules and guidelines that the social network enforces. There are several actions that will need to be taken in order to ensure compliance, such as the development of a third-party application that is used to handle the ‘Likes’ of any contest, and the knowledge that any winner of a contest cannot be directly contacted through Facebook. You can find all of this information in the Facebook Terms and Conditions, which will help ensure overall compliance and eliminate the threat of page deletion.