Facebook promotions. Whether it's a contest or a campaign, Facebook promotions are seen as the golden gate to a larger fan base, dedicated customers, and increased engagement. The grab and reward idea for brands for racking up fan numbers isn't a poor one. Often time, it's just not executed properly.
Instead of a another "# of tips to make your contest work", there's a way to go about certain contests and campaigns that benefit more than just the brand and greatly increase the chances of valuable partnerships, brand ambassadors, and quality conversation and backlinks. How do you get access to all of these benefits, you ask? Simple. You use bloggers to drive your campaign. Here's some insight on how exactly to do that:
- Find the bloggers that best suit your goal. Are you giving away daily prizes with getting a massive increase of fans in mind? Showerhead company Oxygenics hosted a $50/day giveaway with Bed, Bath & Beyond gift cards. They wanted to target females, mainly moms, who love shopping and would be the likely ones in the house to choose the showerhead. By using giveaway blogs and Facebook pages, such as Suburban Coupon Mom, Sweeties Sweepstakes, and Freebie Junkie, Oxygenics was able to spread the word of their contest to that exact audience and went from 117 fans to just over 9,700 in 90 days. But if you're conducting a campaign with a pet product company, then reach out to pet and pet product bloggers. Giving away a travel package to Chicago for a weekend? Use travel bloggers to promote your contest.
- Provide quality content. The best way to go about this is to offer the blogs niche content. Give those travel bloggers a post that includes ten reasons why Chicago is the best place to visit in the spring. That way they can pair their content with promoting the contest and everybody wins.
- Give bloggers an opportunity to participate. Bay area cookie company, Donsuemor, used National Dessert Month as an opportunity to reach out to the dessert blogger community and offer them free Donsuemor cookies in exchange for creating a one-of-a-kind recipe that would be featured on the Dessert a Day Facebook tab. They were able to fill up an entire month with custom recipes, photos, and interactions. Donsuemor's fans, followers and website conversion rates increased. They were able to drive traffic from the Facebook and the bloggers posts to the website, which ultimately raised their conversion rate (meaning how many people came to the website and then bought something); how do you like that for ROI? Facebook page received 723 new likes and average amount of feedback was about 10-20 likes per post. They also have over 30 permanent backlinks spread across the Internet from the participating blogs. Not to mention a batch of quality photos for Instagr.am, Flickr, and Facebook.
- Consider a joined campaign. Many bloggers are looking to increase their networks, too. More Facebook fans, more subscribers, etc. If you have product, such as gift cards, showerheads, jewelry, etc, offer to conduct a join campaign with the blogger where they write about your product/company and the post offers readers a chance to win a prize for, say, commenting on the post and becoming a fan of both the blog's and your brand's Facebook pages. These are not hard to track, and it makes it so that everyone wins- the blogger, the participant, and you!
- Share the love. Give the bloggers public credit. Become their fan, tag them in your postings, Tweet to them; they will appreciate and reciprocate this action. Take time to specifically thank the people who they directed to your page. Oxygenics found that one particular blog sent more than 2,000 fans to the page, so they in turn have requested to purchase an ad on the blog knowing now its effectiveness.
- Use blog index sites to find outlets. Sites such as AllTop and Technorati give you a one-stop shop to find blogs based on subject and popularity. You can find quality blogs that focus on the subject you're targeting, easily navigate to them, and be able to tell your boss their online rankings and value. Because we all have someone to answer to on the subject of social media marketing, right?
Bloggers are the ideal ambassadors. People read blogs. They trust bloggers, mainly because they see them as like-minded and honest people just like themselves. Don't try to get a blogger to lie for you. It's all about honesty and a mutually beneficial relationship. If the blogger likes what you have to offer, then you've got not only one fan, but all of their fans hooked.
The last tip: respect bloggers. Do not spam them. Make sure you personalize emails so that they know they're of value to you beyond just placements or links. They're busy, hard working individuals. Make sure you treat them as such.
Blog on, Facebook away, and reward to the fullest extent!