Five contests you can do on Facebook to get more “Likes”
When you first started using Facebook to get more prospects and leads, did you imaging social media being as helpful of a tool as it is? Many smaller businesses rely on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media to grab people’s attention and bring in the customers, now more than ever. In order to keep the leads coming, you probably have moved on to other social networks like Pinterest, Instagram, and the like in addition to keeping up with Facebook. However, some agents, business owners, independent contractors will use Facebook the most due to familiarity or because most of their prospects are Facebook friends.
If you find yourself relying on Facebook the most, we have some ideas to help you expand your presence on that network. Namely, we have a list of different kinds of contests you can host on your profile or business page to draw in the “likes” from your friends and friends of friends. This isn’t to say that these can only be tried on Facebook; it’s just that these are tried and true with regards to Facebook, and some of them might be difficult to adapt for other social networks (but not impossible). With that said, here are five contests that will make your Facebook friends, and their Facebook friends, like your profile.
1. Caption this photo (you post a photo, your fans post a caption)
A caption contest is probably one of the simplest contests you can host, not only on Facebook but on all social media networks. All you do is find a funny photograph, post it, and announce the contest in the description field. You then let your Facebook friends write captions that go with the photo and enhance its humor. After a while, you pick the funniest comment and reward its writer with some small prize. The contest basically runs itself.
We have actually covered how to run caption contests in another article, which we encourage you to read for more in-depth tips. To summarize, you need to make sure that your photo is both family friendly and funny, and that the description of the photo clearly announces the contest and the reward. After that, you can sit back and watch your profile get a lot of engagement.
2. Quiz (one question, one right answer)
This contest is also pretty easy for Facebook, but the setup can take a little more time than the caption contest. First step is to think of a single question to ask your Facebook friends. The question can have only one right answer. The question cannot be too easy, or else everyone is going to get the right answer, but neither can it be too hard, or else no one is going to win (or want to put in the effort to win). However, if you find yourself having to choose between an easy question and a hard one, err on the side of hard. Google and Bing tend to make everything easier these days, so the hard question might not be too difficult after all.
The next thing you have to do is announce the quiz, prize, and question on a Facebook post. Keep a regular eye on the comments every now and then to see what your friends and friends of friends are saying as answers. The goal is that the first person with the right answer is the winner. However, if everyone is posting answers that are close to, but not quite, what you are looking for, let the contest run for the rest of the day until you cannot keep up with the comments anymore. If no one has the answer by then, you can give the prize to the answer you deem the closest. You should give the prize to someone, however, and also announce the winners in a separate post. Making a game that no one will win is a surefire way to make people not want to participate in your contests.
3. Poll (one question, multiple right answers)
Whereas a quiz has one question with one right answer, a poll has one question and multiple right answers. After you post your question, you let the poll run for a set amount of time without looking at it. Then, when you have the time to do so, tally up the votes for each answer and the total amount of given votes. You then post the results for all of the participants to see.
Posting the results is the key of this game. Unlike other contests that rely on a given prize, the reward for a poll participant is seeing how many people share their opinions. When you post the results, it will be best if you do the extra math and list the results as percentages. When the participant sees that 63% of people also think that blue is the best living room color or that only 32% agree that blue is only good for a home office, they will feel fulfilled from the poll you posted and will want to do another one.
4. Share this (share this post, one winner gets…)
A “share this” contest can be difficult to keep track of, but requires very little setup. In a post, you ask your friends to share the post (which ought to have some other fun content on it to keep the contest entertaining). You then have to keep track of who shares it, how many times they shared it, and how many of their friends shared the post they shared. The winner, who should get some kind of prize, is the person who resulted in the most shares through their sharing and their friends sharing.
As you can see, this contest can be very hard to keep track of when a fairly large amount of people get involved. There is, however, an easier variation of this that works well both on Facebook and Twitter: a hashtag contest. Basically, you post a hashtag instead of a status that your friends must use and spread. The winner will be the person who causes the most widespread proliferation of that hashtag. You can then search for the hashtag’s use in various posts and Twitter feeds, rather than a specific post in a sea of status updates.
5. Bring a Friend (invite a friend to like my page, winner gets…)
This contest is perhaps the most straightforward and easiest to perform. You simply ask your friends to invite their friends to like you page, send you friend requests, etc. Whomever gets the most friends involved wins a prize. Not only is this contest very easy to run, but it also has the potential to advertise your page the most.
These five contests are a great way to draw in a bunch of likes on Facebook. In turn, these likes are an excellent way to advertise your business and generate leads. When looking to enhance your social media presence, give these Facebook contests a try.