How to create a photo voting contest in Facebook – Easypromos Basic

One of the most popular and effective promotions in Easypromos is the photo voting contest. If they are well managed, these contests can provide a significant increase in the number of fans, a great deal of virility and brand awareness on the social networks, and a lot of activity among fans of the page.

As we have mentioned in other articles, voting contests may generate a high degree of suspicion and even give the brand a bad image if they are not well managed. The source of the problem is always the same: those users who are considered by others to have won an unrealistically large number of votes. These votes may have been gained because the user has created multiple profiles (there are some users with more than 1000!) or made use of forums and vote-exchanging pages, or it could be because the user is genuinely popular and has a large number of fans. Regardless of the reason, this problem can be resolved by applying either of the following mechanisms to the contest:

A jury chooses the winner from among the 10 most-voted photos.
A jury chooses the winner from between only those photos that have won a minimum of 50 votes.

By applying these two techniques you can assure that the contest will be considered fair by all the community whilst still benefiting from the virality that comes from users seeking votes.

Below we give a step-by-step guide on how to set up a photo contest with Easypromos Basic

A step-by-step guide to setting up a contest with Easypromos Basic:

1.- Install Easypromos Basic. You can follow our installation guide: https://www.facebook.com/easypromos?sk=app_197819613580609

2.- Access the administration panel as indicated in the guide and press the Create Promotion button in order to begin the promotion creation process.

3.- Fill in the form with information about the promotion. Figure 1 shows an example of the correct set up for a photo contest in which only fans can take part. The relevant fields have been marked with arrows. The red arrows signal the parts that are essential for creating a photo contest.

Figure 1: Example of Easypromos Basic form for creating a photo voting contest

Only fans: checking this field means that only those users who like the Facebook page in which the promotion is offered can upload a photo and take part in the contest. Note: this field does not limit voting to fans of a page; that is a Premium feature.
Post entries: checking this field means that photos uploaded by users will be public. They will be posted on an Easypromos page that can be accessed from the contest tab (See figure 5).
Voteable entries: checking this field will activate the voting boxes and the Easypromos voting system. This field is only useful if the field entitled “Post entries” has been checked. If the entries are not public, voting is not possible.
Comments: In this field you must enter a text inviting the user to write something in reference to the photo. This field appears in the user’s entry form as can be seen in Figure 6.
Image: In this field you must enter a text inviting the user to upload a photo. This text also appears in the entry form, just above the photo selector, as can be seen in Figure 6.

4.- Make the promotion more creative. This is the 480px wide image that will be seen in the promotion tab on your Facebook page.

Figure 2: Make the promotion more creative – 480px wide image

5.- Activate the promotion: a promotion will be posted in the tab on the Facebook page if the promotion is active and within the start and end dates. In the activation page you can preview how the promotion will look in the tab. As long as the promotion is still active or in drafts, the parameters established in the form in Figure 1 can be edited and modified at any time. In order to activate the promotion it is necessary to pay through PayPal. Once activated the promotion will pass from drafts to being active.

Figure 3: Preview of the promotion and activation

How a user signs up for a photo contest with Easypromos Basic

Figure 4 shows how an Easypromos Basic promotion or competition is seen on the tab of the Facebook page. When the Easypromos Basic application is installed on a page, a tab is automatically created as marked by the blue arrow. The tab icon cannot be modified (this is only possible with the White Label version), but the name of the tab can be modified.

Figure 4: View of the photo contest in the tab on the Facebook page

Users who want to take part in the competition must press the ‘Enter’ button. They will then gain access to the entry form, as shown in Figure 5, where they will be asked to provide their details, and also to the field where they can upload their photo and a description. In Figure 1, texts that correspond to the ‘Comments’ and ‘Image’ fields in the promotion set-up form have been marked in yellow.

If the user is not a fan of the Facebook page, the entry form will be disabled and the user will only have the option of becoming a fan via the pop-up that is shown in Figure 5. When the user presses the “I Like” button, the form will automatically become enabled. If the user is already a fan of the page then the entry form appears directly enabled.

Figure 5: Photo contest entry form

All form fields are required. When the user completes it, he or she will gain access to the “Thanks very much” page, as shown in Figure 6. On this page the administrator has the option of uploading a customized image as a final message. A common practice is making use of this image to offer exclusive coupons to fans.

On this page the user also has the option of posting the contest on his or her wall (it appears as a pop-up when the page is opened) or using the Facebook invite tool to send recommendations to friends. The administrator will be able to know from the administration panel if a user has posted the contest on his or her wall and how many friends he or she has recommended it to.

Figure 6: Final page of entry process

How a user votes in a photo contest with Easypromos Basic

Frequently asked questions in Easypromos are:

Where do you upload the photos?
Where can you see all the photos uploaded by users?
Are the photos uploaded for the contest automatically posted on the wall?

All photos in the contest can be seen and voted for from a page in the Easypromos application. Facebook does not allow contests to take place on the walls or photo albums of a page. All photos will be posted on the Easypromos entry page (Figure 7): this page can be accessed from the page’s promotion tab, specifically from the link signalled with the red arrow in Figure 4, ‘voting entries’. Below you can see an example of the Easypromos entry page.

Figure 7: Photo contest entries page with Easypromos Basic

On this page you can see each of the photos in the contest with information about the participant, the time of entry and the description of the photo. For each photo there is a voting box stating the number of current votes. There is also the opportunity to vote for that photo and the option to share the photo on your Facebook wall in order to encourage your friends to vote for it.

In order for users to vote in an Easypromos contest they must first have accepted the Easypromos Basic basic permissions for applying, as by doing so Easypromos can guarantee:

That only existing Facebook accounts can vote for a photo
That a Facebook account can only vote once for an entry

Note: With Easypromos Basic it is not possible to limit the votes to fans of a page only; this feature is only available in the Premium version of Easypromos. In Easypromos Basic any Facebook user may vote for an entry.

When an entry is shared on a wall, what really happens is that a direct link to the user’s entry is shared. This link takes you directly to a screen with the contestant’s photo (Figure and where you have the opportunity to vote for this photo. It is important to note that each entry has a unique link. Participants use this link to ask their friends to vote in Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, social networks, forums, and so on. Thus it is this link that generates the virality of the contests.

Figure 8: Voting for an individual entry

Final recommendations

NEVER create a contest in which the winner is the one with the most votes
The most effective voting contest is that in which the winner is chosen from among those contestants who have gained a minimum number of votes
The prize is very important. The best prizes are group prizes:
A dinner or a trip with friends (You and your friends can go to…)
The minute rule: a user must be able to choose a photo from his or her computer in 1 minute.

Related links:

Written by: cbonfill