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.