3 good practices for creating an effective promotion in facebook

In Easypromos we see many promotions every day. Since we set up the application over 25,000 promotions have been created. With this amount of information it is not complicated to detect recurring patterns and certain common practices in those promotions that have achieved most visibility. From the vantage point of privileged observers that this position gives us we want to share with you a summary of the best practices for achieving an effective promotion. For us, an effective promotion is one which gains the maximum number of fans. We are aware that this is a partial reading of the concept of ‘effectiveness’ but it will suffice for the purpose of this blog.

1. The prize is important

We are not revealing anything new when we say that the prize offered in the promotion or prize draw is one of the principal factors in influencing participation. We can confirm that the promotions which have gained most fans have been those that offered the best prizes, from iPads to free flights. Depending on the value of the prize, the user will be more or less willing to participate. Our recommendation is to use simple promotions if the prize is small and more complex promotions if the prize is valuable. A simple promotion could consist, for example, of creating a promotion in which the user just has to be a fan of the page in order to participate. An example of a more complex promotion could be one in which the user must upload a video.

2. Group competitions

If we are able to offer an attractive prize then we recommend creating group competitions. In a competition the participant must make some kind of contribution which will then be evaluated by means of voting or a jury, or a combination of both. The most regular competitions in facebook are those in which the user uploads a photo or video, answers a question, or writes a text. One type of competition that works very well in Easypromos is that in which the participant is required to send in a photo of a group of people; for example: “upload a photo of the last time you went out partying with your friends”. In this way, just one participation is likely to attract the attention of all the people who appear in the photograph, and thus there is a higher probability that the promotion will be distributed among the friends of the participant. But be careful: it is very important not to directly encourage the contestant to invite his friends to take part in the promotion as this goes against facebook promotions policy.

3. Managing the votes

Those competitions in which users’ votes play a part are an important source of fans. With Easypromos each participation has a unique URL and can thus be easily shared on Facebook, Twitter, or any other website. However, the voting can arouse much suspicion as it is common for some users to acquire a high number of votes in a very short time. This fact generates a lot of noise amongst the participants and we know that it has caused more than one headache for many community managers. With Easypromos we can assure that all the votes in a competition are cast by users who are registered in facebook. Although Facebook does not allow the creation of profiles by fake users, it is a well known fact that many users have multiple profiles. There also exist forums where votes are exchanged and, to top it off, there are some users who have dozens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of friends, followers, or subscribers in different social networks (FB, Twitter, YouTube) and who can, with a simple message, mobilize many people.

For this reason we recommend that you avoid competitions in which the prize is given to the user with the most votes. One good practice is to select the winner from among those participants who have achieved a minimum number of votes. For example: “among all the users who have won a minimum of 100 votes we will hold a prize draw…”

To finish, we would like to mention that with Easypromos Premium we can limit voting to only those who are fans of the page, so if someone suddenly wins a lot of votes, then at least we have the satisfaction of knowing that the voters have become fans of our page.

We hope that these recommendations have been of use to you. We invite you to follow the conversation on our facebook wall or twitter.

Related links:

• Recommendations on how to create effective promotions and sweepstakes on facebook with Easypromos