One of my clients kicked off a Facebook contest today, so I wanted to share five contest tips that will help your next contest achieve its goals:

1. Highlight Customers

In the case of a physician practice, the customers are patients. This contest puts the patients front stage, highlighting their stories while showing how the practice helped each patient get back in the game. I love how they include advice from the athletes as well as photographs and back stories. It helps others see how they could benefit from the services these patients received.

2. Share the Prize

Notice that the winning entry will win a prize not only for the athlete, but also for the athlete’s school. A scholarship prize for the winning athlete attracts friends and family of that athlete. A prize for the school’s Athletic Department attracts the whole school. By awarding prizes to both athlete and school, the contest ensures the highest degree of participation.

3. Make it Social

When you run a contest on Facebook, users can invite their friends to enter the contest as well as vote in the contest. Also, every time someone votes, Facebook publishes an update to that person’s news feed about it. This promotes your contest to friends of both voters and entrants – people who might not know about your organization. If one of your goals is brand awareness, this is a win.

4. Comply with Facebook Guidelines

This means using a third party application for contests. I like Wildfire (not an affiliate link) because it is easy to set up. They offer various price points, but you can run a month long contest for less than $36. Do not use Facebook as a contest platform by asking people to enter the contest by tagging photos or clicking Like. You can’t use Facebook posts or messages to notify winners, either. Any violation could get your Page shut down permanently, so familiarize yourself with the guidelines.

5. Know your Goal

In this case, Commonwealth Orthopaedics is seeking brand awareness. They want people to know about their services through their Facebook Page, so they selected a contest format that had a low barrier to participation: a simple vote. Contests that require more interaction, like uploading a photo or creating a video, set the bar higher and are more suited to goals around engaging customers and strengthening your relationship with them.

Want more information on Facebook Contests?
Check out Engage your People with Facebook  or Facebook for Arts Organizations.

image by Theodore Scott

Occasionally, when I meet people in person the conversation will go something like this:

Acquaintance: Hey I read your twitter bio. Cool. Where do you kayak?

Me: Well, I have kayaked a few times, but the bio is a metaphor for what I do.

Acquaintance: Oh, do you have a lot of water enthusiasts as clients?

Since Twitter gives only 140 characters, I thought I’d flesh out the details, because there are reasons to have an apprentice kayak guide as your social media consultant:

Apprentice

An apprentice is still learning.
At this point, anyone who claims to be a social media expert is exaggerating, because the landscape is new, evolving and changes happen fast. Just look at Google+ – it’s been around for only a handful of months and already has amassed 50 million(!) users. Not to mention Facebook – Mark Zuckerberg keeps rolling out the changes to stay on top. Old favorites, in the meantime, have come and gone. With all the apps and tools and reports that are introduced daily, it’s important to have someone with you who is still learning, still researching, still curious.

Kayak

It is much easier to navigate a river if you have a kayak, helmet, life jacket, and paddle.
Similarly, there are tools to make navigating the social media stream easier:

Social media calendars, bingo cards, Yahoo Site Explorer, Keyword tracking, Google Analytics, Hootsuite, Social Bakers, realtime search tools like Topsy and Social Mention, Twitter analytics tools like TweetReach, Facebook Insights, Facebook Ads, CoComment to keep track of blog comments, Boardreader to track comments on forums and discussion groups.

A guide will direct you to the best tools for your project and see that you use them properly.

Guide

You can’t get down the river if you don’t know where you are going – a guide can help you figure out where you want to go and help you craft a plan to get there.

This is especially true with social media.

It’s ok to jump in and test the waters in your neighbor’s backyard pool, but for a campaign important to your organization, you need to first figure out the destination – the goal of the campaign. That key information will help you and your guide craft a plan to achieve that goal.
Create a measurable SMART goal so that you can adjust tactics as you go:

Specific – something like a 10% increase in ticket sales or blog comments or Facebook Likes
Measurable – if measuring an increase, establish a baseline first
Attainable – if you just opened your coffee shop, sales will not double from a Facebook coupon
Realistic – see attainable
Timely – a time frame for your campaign

 
You’ll have a much better time traveling down the river if you do it with an experienced teacher. An apprentice kayak guide who’s been there before, can point out the right tools, and help you attain your goals while getting through the social stream in one piece.

Social Media Checklists and Calendars

You know you need a social media calendar.

And a checklist, too, to keep it all straight.

The only problem is, after you organize it all in an Excel spreadsheet it becomes so mind-numbing that you need to main line caffeine to keep yourself on task.

Make it Fun

No, not with flip flops and a margarita. It’s only Wednesday, for goodness sake.

Make it into a game.

A bingo game.

Click on the image above, print out a couple of copies and each time you complete a task, place a marker on the appropriate square. (I use M&Ms -they’re tasty and they get the job done)

Have ideas for ways to play? Let us know in the comments!

Many thanks to  Maryann Devine of Smarts and Culture for suggesting that I adapt Kelly Parkinson’s Bingo idea. And Kelly’s idea for Blog Twister? Equally mind-blowing.

 

Whenever someone asks me about my background, I sweat a little. 
And get a bit flustered.

Because I’ve taken the circuitous route.

The Circuitous Route

The circuitous route is not a linear path and it’s not a prescribed step-by-step cookbook approach.

It’s not like I wanted to be a doctor and said great, I’ll major in biology, get straight As, go to medical school, choose a specialty, then on to residency and open a practice.

My experience was more like hmmm, I like computers and I LOVE San Francisco, so why don’t I move there and get a job in a computer company?

And when I found that I really liked teaching people about computers, I thought why don’t I become a teacher?

I also liked learning new skills, drawing and seeing how the built environment affects our lives, so I studied architecture in graduate school. But when I worked in an architectural firm, there wasn’t enough teaching/learning for my taste, so I circled back to teaching.

You get the idea.

I’m interested in a lot of different subjects, and I especially like interacting with other people, learning and teaching new things.

This is the circuitous route.

Social Media, like the circuitous route, is not linear and rarely follows a formula.

Experiments

When you take the circuitous route, you need to experiment, because you don’t know what you’ll find. I mean, when I was working at the computer company I had no idea that my favorite part of the job would be teaching people how to use computers.

The organizations who are the best at using social media are constantly experimenting because they understand that not every scenario can be planned or scripted.

My favorite unscripted example is from the Mayo Clinic.

Through their patient story website they came upon a video of an older couple playing a piano duet in their Gonda Building.

They recognized excellent, shareable content and distributed the video through Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. The video went viral and has been viewed over 7.5 million times, extending awareness of Mayo’s brand and highlighting their patient’s story.

Serendipity and Wrong Turns

The circuitous route requires ceding control and experimenting with boundaries.
It also requires being a little uncomfortable because when you take the circuitous route, you need to be at ease with both serendipity and wrong turns.

Most people are ok with serendipity, because the happy factor outweighs the unexpected factor.

Wrong turns are another story, because many people equate wrong turns with failure.

But wrong turns provide extremely useful information.

For instance, the following tweet would be fairly harmless for the personal Twitter account it was meant for:

“Ryan found two more 4 bottle packs of Dogfish Head’s Midas Touch beer… when we drink we do it right #gettngslizzerd”

But, wrong turn, it got published to the @RedCross account.

The Red Cross handled the detour extremely well (and with humor) by removing the above tweet and replacing it with:

“We’ve deleted the rogue tweet but rest assured the Red Cross is sober and we’ve confiscated the keys.”

The Red Cross took a possible PR snafu, reacted quickly, calmly and won the respect of Twitter followers and Dogfish Head. In fact, they were so impressed that @dogfishbeer’s fans launched a fundraising and blood donation drive for The Red Cross under the hashtag of #gettngslizzerd.

These examples resonate with me (and with their social media followers) because they are authentic, unscripted and show people and organizations who are trying to do the right thing.

The circuitous route may not be the most direct path, but it sure makes for interesting stories.

Mimi Carter, of Sparklight Communications, and I are continuing our video series with this week’s episode of Audience and Online Presence.

The big take-away: make sure that your intended audience sees themselves in your website or your newsletter or your Facebook Page. If they don’t see themselves, they won’t come back.

by mynetx, on flickr

Ever since Facebook introduced its Promotion and Contest Guidelines, many people are still confused about how to run a contest, abide by the rules and make it successful.

I first talked about Facebook’s Contest Guidelines here, but today I’m going to focus on mistakes I see all the time on Facebook Pages:

1. Using the Like button as a voting ballot

Facebook rules clearly state that “You must not use Facebook features or functionality, such as the Like button, as a voting mechanism for a promotion.”
But voting is a great way to introduce a social aspect to your contest, so have people vote on entries by using a third party application for running your contest. (see item #2)

2. Asking people to enter a contest by commenting or uploading media directly to your Page

Facebook rules clearly state that “you must not condition registration or entry upon the user liking a Wall post, or commenting or uploading a photo on a Wall.”
However, you can run a contest where you embed a third party application on your Facebook Page. This redirects your fans to a place where they may submit text, photos or videos.
One of my favorite third party contest applications is Wildfire. (not an affiliate link)
Wildfire is easy to use and offers a range of pricing options: low priced basic options for small business owners and customization options for those with bigger budgets.

3. Not using fan gates to build a following

If your goal is to grow your fans and followers, an effective way to do this is to condition entry to the contest upon Liking your Page.
I know you’re thinking – “Wait, didn’t she just say that you can’t use the Like button?”
Facebook allows you to hide certain parts of your Facebook Page from those who have not Liked the Page. This is sometimes referred to as a fan gate or reveal tab.
In this case, you would simply hide the link to the contest page from those who have not Liked the Page.
After they Like the Page they are directed to the third party application to enter the contest.
Just be sure that you don’t automatically enter them into the contest when they Like your Page, because this is a violation of Facebook rules: “the act of liking a Page or checking in to a Place cannot automatically register or enter a promotion participant.”

4. Forgetting to incorporate a social component

What’s nice about contests is that every time a fan submits an entry, votes on other entries, or comments on entries the activity generates a newsfeed item on their Wall.
One way to extend the social aspect is to design a contest or sweepstakes where a prize is to be shared among 2 or more people. This encourages people to get their friends involved and spread the word about your promotion.

5. Offering a prize that is neither relevant nor rare.

The best prizes are relevant to your organization.
If you are an arts organization, tickets to a performance are much more relevant to your true audience than an iPad.
Also, if you can provide a rare experience for the winner, then your contest will be sure to draw lots of submissions.
You don’t have to offer lunch with Brad Pitt – and remember, make it relevant to your organization.
If you are a non-profit organization, it could be as simple as offering lunch with a distinguished member of your board or backstage access to an event you are hosting.

Want more information on Facebook Contests? Check out Facebook for Arts Organizations or Engage your People with Facebook.

This is the second video in a series that I am creating with my friend Mimi Carter from Sparklight Communications.

In this episode, we talk about Calls to Action for your online properties.

Here are some highlights:

1. Make sure your calls to action are tied to either a marketing goal or a revenue goal: awareness, engagement, sales, donations.

2. Make sure your calls to action are easy to follow – prioritize and only include one or two calls to action above the fold on the Home Page of your website.

3. Word choice matters. Research shows that “Click Here” outperforms “Submit” – so take care when designing your call-to-action buttons.

4. Always be testing to find which calls to action work best with your audience.