How to host a facebook contest that generate fans, sales and traffic

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Facebook contest has been playing a big rule to increase the fans base, and when the fans increase the sales and traffic will also increase. What is more, facebook contest help us to have more interaction between pages and fans then of course more engagement. Facebook contest are really important for anyone who is serious about marketing on facebook.

The whole point of the contest, is to whip up a frenzy of activity and excitement around your brand and eventually make some sales. You can ask your fans to opt-in their email address to enter the contest which going to be great way to build your email list too ( third party apps will help you with this).

The Rules

The first step to running a successful contest on Facebook is to make sure that your contest stay on Facebook, by following the rules. You see, Facebook has set out some very concrete guidelines where contests are concerned, and it has no compunction and every right to pull both your contest and your page down if they feel you’ve violated those guidelines.

Click on the link below to read the guidelines:

http://www.facebook.com/promotions_guidelines.php

The biggest rule of all is that any contest you run on Facebook has to be run through a third party app.

You can create your own app or you can use a third party app called Wildfire ( started with 5$ and 0.99$ a day ) or Easypromos ( Free to 5000 fans).

The Prizes

The prize that you offer should be something that’s valuable to your target demographic or related to your products or services. I personally think that offering one of your actual products or services as the contest prize can be a good idea. If you don’t have a product then buy something that can be valuable to your fans.

Examples For Facebook Contests

(*my best) Making Fans To Invite Their Friends

There is no limitation on the number of fans users can invite to a page, which makes the inviting process as one of the best ways to increase the number of your page fans. But how to make your fans to invite their friends? Running a contests is the answer Contests are somehow the single best tool for driving more users to your public pro?le if you encourage fans to invite their friends.

While you will receive an initial surge in fans from inviting their friends and targetingg network in?uencers, the growth will eventually started.

Play Games

If you seriously want your fans to interact with you, you should play games with them. You don’t need to develop or install an application for this, Games here isn’t a contest. In addition, you only should be able to come up with plenty of games and determine the best incentives. Here is two Games I’ve noticed some pages playing it with their fans.

1. Facebook Scavenger Hunt This is probably one of the easiest competitions to set up. come up with 10 or 20 clues about random items hidden around Facebook or your website. Get people to go and search for this items and then post a link for them. The quickest to complete the scavenger hunt wins. Keep in mind that this can get extremely challenging to handle once you have a large number of fans.

2. Top Score In Facebook Games As you know people are always looking for good ways to waste there time which presents a great opportunity. Browse through some of the most addictive games on Facebook and once you’ve found one, challenge your fans to beat your high score and post them. Easy game to play with your fans but can generate a large response.

Think about a related contest

Actually you can create a new contest idea that related to your page by your self. For example, if your page is about photography you can create a contest that asks your fans to upload their best photo they took to win the newest Canon Camera . Think about a contest that somehow can be related to your audience.

Frequently Asked Questions

“Do I need to use an app if I’m just talking about or advertising a contest that I’m running elsewhere?”

If you’re running a contest on your website, blog, in real life, or anywhere else apart from Facebook, you don’t need to use a 3rd party app if all you do is talk about/advertise said contest. You can’t ask people to do anything on your Facebook page.

“Can I ask people to like my page, upload a photo, or post on my page’s wall as a condition of entering my contest?”

Yes and no. You can force visitors to like your page before having a chance to enter the contest, but you can’t require fans to post anything or submit anything through Facebook as a prerequisite to entering the contest. (That’s where the 3rd party app comes in, because you can ask them to submit things there!)

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Tagged as: facebook contest, facebook page, fans, increase fans, sales, traffic

Article by Faissal Alhaithami

Entrepreneur, Social Media Specialist @Kataraqatar, gladly the founder of Fansbridge. Trainer and Keynote Speaker and the Author of Facebook marketing for smart people.

Faissal has written 53 awesome articles for us at Fans bridge blog

Twitter: @alhaithami | Facebook | Google+