Running a social media contest can be a great way to engage your audience, increase brand awareness, and amplify engagement. After all, who doesn’t like winning a prize or getting their entry selected from thousands of participants?
But how do you come up with a contest idea that goes viral? What are the best practices for running successful contests?
In this guide, we’ll share our favorite social media contest examples and how you can create one without driving yourself crazy.
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What is a social media contest?
A social media contest is a marketing campaign where participants follow specific rules for a chance to win a prize. It is a promotional event designed to increase followers, likes, shares, leads, and brand awareness.
With these contests, you can let the audience showcase their creative side and increase interaction with the brand. For example, if you have a beauty brand, you can ask your followers to share a makeup look using your products. Here’s how NYX, a cosmetics brand, runs a similar contest.
Best social media contest ideas
These 12 social media contest ideas will get you inspired and set the stage for designing your own campaign.
1. Photo Contest
Running a photo contest you can ask your audience to share photos of how they use your products or services. You can reward the most creative or unique entry with a prize. This is a great way to collect user-generated content and showcase the best creations on your profile.
Canva, an online design tool, often runs design challenges with the hashtag #CanvaDesignChallenge for their users.
These challenges are great for increasing awareness and motivating more people to use the tool.
To date, their design challenge hashtag has over 200,000 posts, many of which Canva repurposes and uses on its profile.
2. Video Contest
With the popularity of short-form videos like reels and YouTube shorts, video contests can be your go-to contest idea.
To run a video contest, you can announce a theme and ask followers to create unique, fun, or inspiring videos. As videos take more time than photos, ensure the prize is worth their efforts.
GoPro, a manufacturer of action cameras, shared a video challenge named “GoPro Line of the Winter,” where they asked users to upload raw footage of their skiing or snowboarding clips.
These types of contests not only promote engagement and give brilliant ways to capture UGC but also enhance brand loyalty and strengthen the community.
3. Like/share/comment to win
This is one of the easiest types of contests to set up and you can get more participation than the earlier two ideas.
If you’re a new business or want to start with something small, this contest idea is your best bet.
AndLight, a home decor brand, hosted a Black Friday giveaway contest with simple rules that required the participants to follow, like, and comment.
What we liked best about this contest? One of the rules mentioned that the comment required users to share what they love about the product. AndLight can then use these comments to feature as testimonials or customer views on the product page.
4. Sweepstake
Sweepstakes are contests where to enter, participants need to fill out a form or share details like their name, email, etc. Once shared, the winner is chosen at random.
If you’re trying to build your email list or nurture people who might be interested in your brand, sweepstakes are your ideal contest choice.
Risk of Rain, a video game series, hosted a sweepstake where they invited participants to their landing page.
On the landing page, there were six ways to enter, and the participant needed to enter their full name and email address for each of them.
5. Tag a Friend Contest
This is an easy way to increase your brand’s reach and get more followers for your social profiles. You ask the participants to tag one (or more) of their friends to enter the contest. Many brands even offer bonus entries for extra tags.
Miniso, a variety store chain, hosts a tag-a-friend contest that asks the users to tag three of their friends to win a cute Lotso blind box. This post got close to 700 comments, which means about 2100 new potential followers.
6. Holiday-Themed Contest
Holidays are the perfect time for people to engage in creative contests to get them into the festive mode. You could run a campaign on different holidays like Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, etc.
Here’s how Acer asks users to share photos of their Christmas-decorated home on Twitter or Facebook.
As people are enthusiastic to show how beautifully they have decorated their homes, there’s no extra struggle to participate in such campaigns. Thus, you can get a lot of entries and people to visit your social pages.
7. Trivia or Guessing Contest
Whether it’s testing people’s knowledge related to your product or guessing what the newly launched feature would be, trivia or guessing contests are fun to participate in.
Here’s how Instax, an instant camera series, asks its audience to guess the number of mini films in this short reel to win some Instax goodies.
These contests are not only for entertainment but also offer a chance to educate people about your product’s special features.
For example, let them guess the battery power your phone offers or the USP of your cooking sauces.
8. Supporting a Cause Contest
According to research, 60% of consumers believe real change will come when brands begin addressing social issues. By using the contest medium to support a cause that aligns with your vision and values, you can attract people who share the same passion.
IKEA holds a soft toy drawing competition every year for kids where the most unique creations are turned into soft toys and sold worldwide in IKEA stores. All the proceeds go towards supporting initiatives and charities that promote “children’s right to play.”
This contest is the perfect example of imbibing creativity and supporting a social cause that’s close to many of IKEA’s customers.
9. Sign-Up Contest
If you’re looking to generate leads with your contests, sign-up contests can be your go-to idea. This is a great idea for small business owners who are looking to push more leads into their sales funnel.
By the end of the contest, you’ll likely see an uprise in your subscriber base. All you need to do then is keep giving them the information and content they need to stick with your product or service.
604 Now, a lifestyle and entertainment business, asks the participants to sign up for their free Coast Rewards membership in order to win a round-trip from Vancouver to Tokyo.
Once they sign up, 604 Now can use those email addresses to start sending relevant deals and discounts to the users.
10. Hashtag Contests
Hashtag contests have become quite popular in recent times due to the popularity of TikTok campaigns like Colgate’s #MakeMomSmile campaign and Chipotle’s #LidFlipChallenge.
To make the most out of this idea, create a trendy hashtag and make the contest super fun to miss out on.
Disney put a beautiful hashtag campaign named #ShareYourEars in celebration of Mickey Mouse’s 90th anniversary. For each person who posted their photo with the hashtag, Disney donated $5 to the Make-A-Wish foundation.
The result? 1.77 million posts, 420 million social media impressions, and $2 million in donation.
11. Collaborative Contests
Do you want to increase your brand’s reach? With collaborative contests, you can partner with an influencer or brand and reach new customers by benefiting from their audience. To ensure you reach a relevant audience, the influencer or brand you select should cater to the same people.
See how Tiny Minds Toolbox, a scented coloring brand for kids, collaborated with Mckay, a first-grade teacher with over 80k followers, to host a giveaway.
The post got hundreds of comments, and many potential customers who now know about scented markers offered by the company.
12. Re-Occurring Contests
Are you tired of contests where you get an influx of new followers, but they soon end up unfollowing you as the contest ends? One way out is by holding re-occurring contests.
You can create recurring contests that keep your followers engaged and motivated to participate in the next one. For example, you can hold a weekly or monthly draw and keep giving prizes at regular intervals.
Milton, a kitchenware product brand, often holds recurring contests on their Instagram page to keep followers engaged and reduce the number of unfollows they get after each contest.
How to run a social media contest?
Now that you know all the different contest ideas, here’s a step-by-step process to run a successful social media contest.
1. Set your goal and choose a platform
Determine what you’re trying to achieve with this contest. Are you looking to gain new followers, increase awareness about your new product line, or drive traffic to your website?
Depending on the goal, you can choose a contest type and the relevant platform. For example, if you’re running a video contest, Instagram and TikTok would be preferred platforms.
Pro-tip: Go through the guidelines for each platform. For example, Instagram requires you to have all the rules laid out for contests, whereas X (Twitter) discourages posting the same tweet repeatedly.
2. Fix a budget and prize
How much are you planning to spend on your contest campaigns? If you are holding recurring contests to keep your followers engaged, ensure you plan your budget accordingly.
Once the budget is decided, narrow down your target audience and select a prize that encourages them to participate in your contest. This prize could be credits, cashback, discounts, free goodies or samples, etc.
Many creative contests follow the tiered prize strategy where more than one winners are picked, and the top winners get the most lucrative prizes.
3. Plan and run your contest
There are a lot of things you need to plan before you finalize and start your contest. Here’s what you should include in your plan:
- Decide how long the contest should run and if you want to restrict it to a particular location. Woorise’s geo-targeting feature allows you to deliver campaigns based on locations.
- Set the rules and create a catchy copy. If you’re new to contests and giveaways, select from readymade trendy social media contest templates on Woorise.
- Build a communication planner that includes when you’ll announce the contest, how often you’ll post about the contest, and when you’ll announce the winners.
- Decide how you want to promote the contest and if you want to include influencers in your promotion strategy
Once the plan is ready, announce your contest and watch out for entries.
4. Pick the winners
Once the contest is over, pick the winners. Here are three ways you can conduct this process fairly:
- Use tools like Woorise to pick one or more random winners in a single click. You can even set filters to select those who took specific actions or answered relevant questions.
- Select judges who can evaluate the entries fairly.
- Pick someone who tagged the most friends or shared the contest the most.
5. Measure the results
The contest has ended, and you have announced the winner. Instead of calling it quits here, measure the results you generated from this campaign. How many entries did you get? Did it result in increased engagement? Did you gain new followers? Did you achieve the goal you started with?
These metrics will give you insights to optimize your campaigns in the future and keep doing more of what worked well.
Create winning social media contests with Woorise
Many brands think of social media contests as a way to increase followers and boost engagement. But the real benefits of contests are community participation and building relationships with the right people. It’s how you create a brand your audience loves to stay connected with.
Instead of designing everything from scratch, save your team’s time and sign up for a 14-day free trial to check out Woorise’s templates for social contests and giveaways.
