Guest post by Brendan McManus, Follow him on Twitter | Read his blog
You don’t need to be a big brand with a huge marketing budget to run a user-generated contest that spreads like wildfire. Non-profits and small businesses are currently running contests with Wildfire that are generating thousands of submissions and are reaching tens and, in some cases, hundreds of thousands of consumers via newsfeeds, friend invites and sharing. Why are these contests doing so well?
1) Contests that focus on topics that people feel passionate about tend to generate the greatest interest. At Wildfire, we’ve seen highly successful photo and written contests that focus on pets, children, sports (e.g. surfing, skiing, mountain biking), hobbies (e.g. cooking, travel), and affinity groups.
2) Contests that make it easy for entrants to submit their content tend to generate more submissions. Asking entrants to submit photos that they likely already have in their Facebook photo album (e.g. photos of travel, kids, pets, hobbies) or that they can easily snap using their mobile phone will tend to result in more entries. Likewise, if asking for written content its best to keep word limits reasonably low. Video contests require quite a lot of effort on the part of entrants so generally result in a much lower number of entries – but if the content is good, these can be very viral.
In the end, customers are people. They love sharing what they care about most with their friends on social media. Businesses need to cater to their customers’ interest in sharing if they want to engage more people, acquire more leads, and ultimately make more money.
{ 1 comment }
My Shameless Video Contest Entry…Disclaimer: Please Help :-)
by tarynsouthern on December 12, 2009
First off, thank you to Brian for allowing me to do a guest post on Bub. Last week I contacted Brian to solicit some advice on how I could get the word out about a little video I recently released on YouTube.
A contest video.
First, let me preface by saying that I’ve never entered a video contest before. The opportunity cost just didn’t make sense – taking time out from other work to essentially create a free commercial for someone and then shamelessly self-promote it in hopes of winning a gift certificate (?) Didn’t seem worth it.
Then I came across this contest sponsored by Lash Allure MD. There’s a $100,000 pot at stake – which, needless to say, is much larger than most other online video contest winnings. Immediately, my mind was racing about the web content I could fund with 100k. No more brand or studio pitches in 2010? I’d be in heaven.
The best part (or, in some cases, the worst)? The winner is NOT chosen based on a subjective judging process. The system is clear: the person with the most “votes” wins. Each YouTube star rating counts as one vote, and one comment, per user, per day, counts as a vote. Simple, quantifiable. And yet, a little unfair for those who don’t have massive YouTube followings.
So I decided to enter. First with my own video, and then after realizing that I would never win on my own regards, I teamed up Olga Kay, a YouTuber with about 70,000 subscribers. To incentivise people to help, we decided to offer up $10,000 of the prize money to dedicated commenters. Every day for 20 days, we pose a new question in the annotation on the video. Answer the question, and you could win $500. $500 to twenty people = $10,000 total giveaway.
Shameless.
It’s now Dec. 12th – only 8 days before the contest ends. We are currently in 2nd place, behind a witty YouTube blogger with a big following, but with the a little nudge here and there from the right people, we could definitely win the grand prize.
We’ve received several little endorsements from friends – including tweets from Ryan Higa and Dave Days – and brought on a new, third partner – Phil DeFranco.
We are asking for your help because this isn’t about making money to put in a savings account. It’s a viral contest, and as such, Olga, Phil and I want to put that money toward advancing our own web content initiatives. Not to mention that we would still give away $10k (and a few other little surprises) to our commenters.
It’s hard for me to ask any favors of anyone, but in this case, I’m swallowing my pride.
So, please, if you have a chance today (and for the next 8 days) – rate and comment this video here —> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df2_CZCfAaE – and RT if you can
Oh, and for all of you business owners out there looking to hold promotional video contests – take a cue from Lash Allure MD. By judging a video contest on ratings and comments, rather than on the video content itself, the company is benefiting from the self-promotional efforts of people like me as well as the engagement and interaction of potential customers who are rating/commenting on the videos. Smart.
{ 2 comments }