By now, the vast majority of businesses ranging from crafting moms to giant corporate entities, have a Facebook page. Facebook provides a wonderful opportunity to get your brand and promotions in front of your loyal friends and followers. A common method of increasing the buzz about your brand via Facebook is to host a contest.

Contests on Facebook are beneficial to your business in two ways:

1. People love a deal, and they like to pass deals along to friends. So your loyal fans will see the contest, and share it with their own Facebook friends. You will likely see a significant increase in the number of followers you have during the contest promotion.
2. You reward your current customers and bring your brand back to the front of their mind.

Heinz ran a successful promotion recently, announcing their new Dip and Squeeze Ketchup packaging. Was it really exciting? No, not really. But they made the hype and kept everyone waiting to see what the big prizes would be on contest day. Every now and then Heinz posts a humorous little quip or a bit of trivia about themselves. I can tell you, I haven't forgotten to buy ketchup since I started following them. It works.

Comfy Sacks is a manufacturer of beanbag chairs and other fun beanbag furniture. They recently held a Facebook contest that was a lot of fun, which they called "I Need a Comfy!" In this contest, fans sent in photographs of their terrible couches. The photos were uploaded to Comfy Sacks photos, and the terrible couch with the most votes won a 5-foot beanbag couch. Of course, everyone had to see how terrible other people's couches were, and those that submitted their couch photos begged and pleaded with their Facebook friends to come vote. In the end, even those that did not enter the contest enjoyed it, and Comfy Sacks gained brand recognition and a ton of new fans.

Making your contest successful requires a mixture of creativity and follow through. Your prize has to be appealing, and ideally your contest should require followers to keep coming back to your fan page. A quick search through Facebook will give you great examples of how other companies- and possibly your competition- are making Facebook work for their marketing efforts.