Why hold contests?
Competitions, tests and polls are an ideal way to attract the attention of a site’s audience and recruit new users. Do not be lazy to periodically please their readers with similar entertainments. They have fun, and you - direct benefit.
Play we all love since childhood. Having grown up, just change games and toys to more serious. The Internet is also fun for many, so it’s great Some netizens are usually looking for entertainment here. Sin is not take this opportunity to promote your resource.
If only dry information is published on your site, it doesn’t help to expand the circle of readers and increase the popularity of the site. Of their Subscribers need not only to inform, educate, but also to entertain. FROM information consumers need to constantly interact, keep feedback. There is an effective method for this - their involvement in contests, games, competitions.
Unlikely whether this is a discovery. Contests as a tool to increase the target audience has been used for a long time and successfully But if you have recently been in web business, then you should know how to organize and conduct everything correctly so that both users are interested and profitable.
How to host a contest?
Let's figure out how to organize and conduct an interesting contest, how to hook users and what mistakes to watch out for.
- Choose a name
how and in the case of a newspaper article or online publication, in a competition should attract the name. I’ll have to try to make it catchy, intriguing, fun and positive. The name is the first thing they see readers. It depends on him whether they want to understand the essence of your competition, or else prefer to pass by. Just don't go to extremes and do not stoop to vulgarity. Everything should be within reason. Then yes, the name should, first of all, attract attention and cause positive emotions!
2. Choose the right picture
None It's no secret that the Internet audience “loves with their eyes.” therefore It’s not enough to come up with a title and a title, it still needs to be graphically to issue. Successful design is almost half the success of your venture. Competition banner should be striking, attract attention, inviting and visually stand out from the total mass of information material on your site. To achieve this result, a picture needs to be made qualitatively. To do this, it is desirable to possess primary skills graphic editors. If the budget allows, then you can trust banner design for specialized specialists. You can have a quality picture subsequently used to advertise the competition at various venues in social networks, which will provide an influx of new visitors to the site.
3. Clearly state the essence
Most a difficult and creative task is to write what your competition is about. Content has the structure of a mini-literary work, including introduction, basis and conclusion. Try to reveal in the introduction reasons that prompted you to organize a contest. In the main part, state essence and conditions of the competition, details, limitations, terms. In custody Be sure to call the participants to specific actions (send a photo, fill out profiles, like a banner or repost).
4. Show reward to the winner
over prizes for winners should be considered as soon as arose idea of organizing a competition. Experienced web professionals typically look for such events by sponsors or investors. Gifts should be essential, necessary, expensive, so that the participants immediately had incentive to fight for them. These are not necessarily material objects - electrical appliances, household appliances, jewelry, etc. - are quite suitable and season tickets to prestigious sports clubs, tickets to performances or to elite entertainment venues, certificates, discount cards and other intangible incentives.
How as a rule, not one winner is encouraged, but at least three. This is done for so that participants have more chances to win. Several prizes are encouraged especially doubting their strengths participants join the fight for prizes without fear of losing.
not forget about the natural human vanity. For example, I, when held a competition for SalekharCity, the moment of presentation of the gift the winner was captured in a photo and published a picture along with a note about winner on the site and in the social network. This technique undoubtedly enhances interest in the resource itself and attracts to participate in competitions additional users. But more on that below.
5. Pick up experts
If You conduct the competition on your own, without attracting investment and widely publicized, the mission of determining the winner can be taken over. IN otherwise, it becomes necessary to choose an authoritative and competent jury. The composition of the judges in the competition must be made public. it increases the level of the event in the eyes of readers, and eliminates suspicion in falsification of results. In any case, the determination procedure winners should be extremely honest and transparent so that no one there was no shadow of doubt.
6. Communicate
Get ready to the fact that they will have to communicate with the participants throughout all the time of the competition. This is a natural process since readers will in any case have related questions, the need for clarification and clarification of conditions. Your task - responsiveness so that contestants do not feel confused and helpless, forgotten and neglected. They have to Feel your worth in the process. Be objective, tolerant and even respond to complaints and criticism. Ignoring you will not do you honor.
7. To summarize
The most important point is the summing up of the competition.
do from this moment - a solemn event. Light it on the site and in groups in social networks. Be sure to include the names of the winners and prizes, which they received. In addition, it will not be superfluous to each winner write personal greetings. Such attention will flatter your readers and inspire them to communicate more closely with your resource.
How to summarize the results of the contest?
To people tend to doubt. Therefore, when summing up, do everything as honestly as possible, initially, preferably shooting everything on video (ideally - broadcasting in real time). Broadcasts now support several services, we recommend YouTube and Facebook. Followers receive broadcast notification, this is an additional attraction attention of even those who did not participate in the competition. To record video from screen use Screen Recorder-programs.
The easiest way to take stock is to collect all the participants into a file and use the random.org service. Enter the names and surnames of the participants in the field, and the service randomly sorts it. No. 1 on the list is the winner.
For competitions at Facebook and Instagram we recommend woobox.com. The service will allow you to choose the winner by repost, comment for free or both criteria at once. In English, but intuitive.
For the VKontakte contest, the Random.app application is a good fit.
in In general, it is desirable to have a content plan for competitions. AND to conduct such regularly, in turn in each of the social. networks + on site. This will uniformly develop each of the social groups and attract people to the site.
And one more important tip: be sure to clearly limit the time of the contest . This eliminates many misunderstandings.
If comply with all of the above points, then the competition on your site necessarily bring the desired result - to increase the popularity of the resource and will attract a new audience.
Vera Cherenko