How Can You Earn More Social Media Fans With The Help Of Captivating Deals And Give-Aways


by Harry Patterson


In our previous issue, we discovered the methods on how to get individuals to like your Facebook business page. In this issue we are going to talk about using campaigns, challenges and giveaways to draw in a lot more fans.

Using a social media management site solely for promotions, contests and giveaways is a very good way to determine whether these said publicity tactics is working for your business. The site allows anyone to find out the amount of traffic that comes to their page.

This can be a double win situation too because making the promotion exclusive will gather a new set of Facebook fans which is imperative to the development and maintenance of the company's social network page. Contests indulge more people to your page.

Now that you know this, let's proceed to how you can implement Facebook marketing and start making traffic-pulling contests and promos.

First thing you'd want to do is to make certain the updates and contest mechanics are only accessible to your Facebook users. The business should not promote it in emails, newsletters, other social networks or even in their official website other than saying that the promotion is exclusive to Facebook users, of course. As an additional requirement, the mechanics have to be simple and clear. Overcomplicating matters would make contestants think you've set the bar too high and can discourage them from joining.

As an early caution, contests, incentives and promotions tend to be costly as the applications needed to create and run it are also expensive. For example, the application Wildfire has a $5 setup fee and charges $0.99 for each day the campaign runs. In addition to that, Facebook has rigid rules when it comes to running contests inside their system. Generally, a lot of different contests are not even permitted. You are not allowed to have an official contest posted in your wall.

There are some exemptions though. Any business that wants to run contests in Facebook must first purchase at least $10,000 worth of Facebook ads within three months.

To be able to cut costs, there are plenty of business applications which can assist you in making a contest for your Fan page. Contests for Fan page is an application that was created by Wildfire and can help neophytes in producing contests with photo, video, writing and graphical entries. You can also customize your campaign as much as you want with these tools. You can edit campaign mechanics, deadlines of contests, the number of votes allowed per person and the level of contribution of your network. For less complicated navigation, you can place in a contest widget in your Fan page in order for participants to link directly to a micro site. You can also develop your contests and sweepstakes using tools like Vertigo and Strutta.

To really attract a lot of participants, make sure you provide incentives which people can't refuse. As an example, Regus, a workplace supplier ran a contest campaign and offered a fully furnished office for the photo entry that showed the messiest work area. But you shouldn't stop there. More unique prizes include dinner with celebrities or a chance to attend a star-studded party.

A contest that's handled successfully will most certainly generate lots of prospects to the company. For some companies, projects like these may need a ton of attention. However, this can be on the list of most effective tactics to raise business awareness on Facebook.

Be sure to read our next issue of Facebook for Business.We will be talking about some tips on how you can make cash on Facebook.




About the Author: