Facebook Photo Contest Results: 2,727 New Likes and 247 Awesome Photos

Initially, I wasn’t sure if contests would work for us because a lot of ideas fall flat. But now we’ve done 4 contests with SalesBlend.

For one thing, it’s pretty cool watching thousands of likes and hundreds of photos roll in.  And these are targeted likes.  These folks want to come to Yosemite and they work hard to get their friends and families voting.  If they don’t win this contest, maybe they win the next one or they’ll take advantage of one our other promotions.

We wanted to build a community of people who love Yosemite and want to visit—and that’s what we got!” – Ken LeBlanc, Yosemite’s Scenic Wonders

Do you want new Likes and engagement? What about awesome, original images to use on your website, social media accounts and other marketing?

Learn how we helped Yosemite’s Scenic Wonders get 2,727 Facebook Likes and 247 awesome, original photos of Yosemite to use on their website, social media accounts and other marketing.

Step 1: Choose the Prize

The prize was a 2 night stay in a 3 bedroom Yosemite cabin like this one!

The quality of the prize is crucial. We’ve run other contests for Yosemite’s Scenic Wonders and we’ve shown that a 2 night stay in a 3 bedroom Yosemite vacation home is an attractive prize.

We structured the contest so there would be two winners. One by popular vote and one with the best photo as determined by Yosemite’s Scenic Wonders. This achieved engagement from people who have a lot of friends and family on Facebook. It also achieved strong participation from people with high-quality photos.

The prize must be relevant. A free iPad, for instance, is not a relevant prize for this client. Although people who love iPads do visit Yosemite vacation homes, we wanted people who love Yosemite first and have the means to get there.

Remember, the goal is not Facebook Page Likes and email subscribers for their own sake! We want contest entries from the target market we’ve defined with our client.

Always choose a prize with business relevance.

Step 2: Choose Entry Criteria

Make it easy for users to enter your contest while reaching your business goals. For this contest, we designed a fan-gated app using ShortStack.

Since each prize had a ~$700 value, this was sufficient to support the conditions for entry. With the fan-gated app, we required a Page Like, at least one photo of Yosemite and contact details. The photos came with a perpetual licence for use in our client’s future marketing and by default the email addresses were automatically added to our client’s email list.

Here’s what the app looked like to non-fans:

Step 3: Building your Contest Page

When choosing a title and copy, make it simple and informative. Once the user likes the page, let them know it’s going to be very easy to finish entering the contest. Give them clear, step-by-step instructions immediately so people don’t abandon the contest entry form.

You’ll notice that we added a “Winners Circle” because we wanted to provide motivation and evidence. Other people, just like the person entering, have already won similar contests run by us on behalf of this company. We hoped these smiling faces from prior Yosemite winners helped encourage potential contestants to complete the process.

We also kept the style, colors and images consistent page-to-page so the transition felt smooth as they went from non-fan to fan to entry completion. The Great Gray Owl and images of Half Dome and El Capitan are all familiar to those who know and love Yosemite. The call to action, “Upload Your Photo Below!”, kept them moving down the page toward completing the form.

Once the user clicked the “Like” button, here’s the contest page they saw (click the image to zoom):

via:http://www.salesblend.com/2014/facebook-photo-contest-results-2727-likes-247-photos/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+salesblend%2FlJiY+%28SalesBlend+Blog+Feed%29