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How To Run A Winning Online Contest – #PRSADIConf

Posted on 04. Apr, 2012 by Jolina Pettice in Blog, Marketing PR Conferences, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media, user-generated content

If you flip through your TV channel guide, it’s hard not to notice the number of contest-based shows. Whether people are competing to be the next music icon, lose weight or play games using household products the common theme is competition and a chance to win big.

TV producers are smart and continue to find success from audiences who like to compete and love to win.

This same idea can be leveraged in online marketing to get a community excited, find new audiences and keep your brand top of mind.

At the PRSA Digital Impact Conference Sandra Fathi, president and founder of Affect and Ben Pickering, CEO of Strutta guided the audience through the process to create a winning online contest.

Here are some reasons they shared that companies decide to run a promotion.
1. Generate leads and sales
2. Drive traffic online and offline
3. Increase brand equity
4. Engage and delight customers
5. Grow fan base, generate opt-ins and subscribers
6. Gain user data and insight
7. Collect consumer generated content

The 2 common types of promotions include Sweepstakes (chance-based promotion) & Contest (skill-based promotion).

When conducting a sweepstakes keep the call to action clear and the forms easy to fill out.

For contests, there may be a public voting or closed judging or a combination of both. In this method be sure that the criteria for winning is clearly articulated and readily available.

In either model, consider rewarding participants with coupons, discounts or smaller prizes to reward their time and effort, if even they don’t win the grand prize.

Promotional Law Basics
Running promotions involves adhering to laws and the guidelines of individual channels.

Promotion containing all 3 (prize, chance and consideration) is deemed an illegal lottery. Either eliminate chance or consideration.

Facebook promotion guidelines include the following Don’ts:

• administer a promotion directly on your Page or use Facebook features as an entry or voting mechanism
• automatically enter someone for Liking, posting a photo or comment
• use a like button for voting
• use Facebook channels to notify winners

For Twitter, the 140 character limit can make disclosure of material and policy items challenging. Make sure to host the information on your website and link to it often.

Planning Your Promotion
As with any marketing campaign, it’s important to align with business objectives before launching a contest. Documenting your intended outcomes will ensure that the promotion developed is designed to achieve these goals.

As goals are outlined, identify the KPI’s as well. KPIs may include an increase in social community, visitors to a website and/or additional actions from the visitors on-site.

Important planning questions to consider including scoping out time and resources available, setting clear and realistic goals, knowing what your audience wants and creating understandable rules and regulations.

Choosing Your Promotion Type
As you evaluate promotion types, consider it on a scale of low to high in terms of customer engagement and barrier to entry.

The lower the barrier to entry (sweepstakes) the more people who will likely sign up. As you move toward photo and video promotions the barrier to entry increases, but so to does engagement.

Tips for A Successful Promotion
Plan Ahead
One of the biggest reaons promotions fail is due to lack of planing. Create a marketing plan for the contest as you would with any other campaign including key actions, milestones and measurement.

Don’t Over Complicate
Favor execution over concept.  The best idea if not well executed will go nowhere.

Leverage Partners
Marketing partners or sponsors can expand the reach of your promotion and help offset costs with marketing and/or prizes.

Tips to Build Buzz
1. Make it easy to share
2. Post regularly on Facebook (used ‘pinned post’ to keep it visible)
3. Leverage other social networks
4. Promote on your website
5. Email existing customers
6. Enlist sponsors to cross promote
7. Identify influentials to help

Promoting Your Promotion
1. Build and budget for effective marketing (pre and post) including PR, marketing, social media, on-site/in-store and point of sale

2. Leverage existing and new company assets to achieve KPIs through your own database, databases of sponsors. Enlist the help of others who also have a large audience, such as influentials. If you have built them into the promotion, all the better.

3. Stack the deck  and seed entries
Encourage people to enter so that there are examples of what an entry can/should look like.

4. Plan for contingencies if the contest isn’t going to plan
This  may include budgeting for additional costs, but also plan for public take-over and how you will respond and act.

Selecting a Technology Partner or Platform
Here are items to consider when selecting a partner or platform.

• Custom vs Standard Build
• Expertise vs Experiment
• Social Media Tie-Ins
• Budgetary Constraints
• Time-To-Market
• Internal Resources

A case study – New York Intern Project
Sandra’s agency launched a contest to hire a summer intern. However, true goals of the contest were generating awareness for the agency, drive PR and increase social media engagement.

In addition, it was a proof of concept to see if they could run a successful contest and gain valuable insights.

And hopefully find a great intern.

A public vote was used to narrow down contestants to the top 6. Then the top 3 were flown to New York for interviews and challenges. From there, judges picked the winner.

Celebrity judges who were also relevant to the space, such as Guy Kawasaki, were chosen to lend credibility, build in promotional mechanisms and have objective judging.

Campaign results included a 5-fold increase in Facebook Like, 96 entries and over 14,000 votes.  In addition, media coverage was gained in several outlets including CNNMoney.

Contests can hold great opportunity to get a community excited, create content and engage with your brand. While the true end goal may not be giving away a prize, but rather to capture data or drive awareness, a contest can be a great mechanism.

If you are looking to run contests consider your resources and intended outcomes. Then determine whether one, large promotion or a series of smaller promotions is most likely to serve your goals. In addition, think about your existing online marketing efforts and what type of contest will fit in best with the channels and communities you have created.

Have you run an online contest? If so, what did you find worked well or not so well?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2012. |
How To Run A Winning Online Contest – #PRSADIConf | http://www.toprankblog.com

7 Ways to Improve Your Online Reputation Management Strategy

Posted on 19. Dec, 2011 by Ashley Zeckman in Blog, Reputation Management, Search Marketing, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media, user-generated content

Is your reputation management strategy a turn off to your customers and critics?

Should we respond, get angry, fire back, ignore the situation, censor comments, or just see what happens?  Those are some of the many questions that marketers are faced with today.  With more and more consumers and customers turning online to share what they think of a particular brand or company it has become increasingly difficult to capture everything that is being shared.

In April of this year Yelp.com reached 50 million users with over 17 million reviews on their database.  If you are a professional responsible for online reputation management it makes you wonder how many other means are there for your customers and critics to share their opinion about your company.

According to a recent infographic created by Digimind 47% of American companies’ net worth is tied up in intangible assets like brand equity and reputation.  That being said there are two questions that I would like you to ask yourselves:

• Do you know what your customers,competitors, and critics are saying online about your brand?
• Do you have a plan in place to respond to negative feedback?

If you answered no or maybe to either of these questions then there are some things that you should know.

You Gotta Cover Your Assets.

Step one is knowing where you are present online. Step two is devising a plan for using those assets to your advantage.  The state of online reputation management today calls for more than a company website.  Try leveraging your social media channels as a way to attract, engage, and inspire positive feedback about your organization.

[It] is Not Just About Control.  It’s Also About Letting Go.

You are in control of what you post, where you’re present, and how you react to questions or comments.  Make sure that your online approach is aligned and consistent for each platform.  It is impossible to censor every negative comment and piece of information you have online.  Instead respond consistently and appropriately when you do find negative information.

The Rules of Engagement.

Should an issue arise I recommend you have influencers in your corner.  If you take the time to properly build and cultivate relationships online you will be prepared with an army behind you to approach the subject when and if it happens.

The First Rule of Fight Club is: You Do Not Talk About Fight Club.

If your approach to reputation management involves not talking about or planning for negative press then perhaps it’s time to rethink your strategy.  Managing your personal or company reputation head on will show that you have listened and that most subjects are not off limits.

Please Don’t Take a Turn to Negative Town.

Counteracting negativity with negativity is a recipe for disaster.  If you can, try to take a positive approach and do your best to present your case online if you deem necessary.  If you believe that a formal response is in order, maintain a positive outlook and show that you are open to feedback and will address comments head on.

There Are No Mistakes, There’s Things we do, and Don’t Do.

Learning from the mistakes we have made is key in improving a reputation management strategy.  Perhaps you responded poorly to negative feedback.  To avoid making the same mistake twice devise a plan for addressing issues and shedding a positive light on your organization.

Well, I Guess We Can Close the File on That One.

False.  Ongoing monitoring of your online reputation is key in protecting your assets online.  Consider implementing some cost effective solutions that enable you to monitor issues in real time for quick response. It is important to not only monitor your brand name but also products, the company, and key executives.

Not Sure How You Rate?

If you have a few moments I recommend completing the survey below.  I am curious to know how our readers would rate themselves or their companies when it comes to addressing online reputation management.  I would like to share the results on the TopRank Blog in a future post to see how our readers are addressing issues currently and provide additional tips on reputation management for the future.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. |
7 Ways to Improve Your Online Reputation Management Strategy | http://www.toprankblog.com

7 Principles for User Generated Content: Michael DeHaven SES Chicago 2011

Posted on 16. Nov, 2011 by Ashely Zeckman in Blog, content marketing, Interactive Marketing, Search Engine Strategies, Search Engines, ses chicago, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, ugc, user-generated content

Michael DeHaven’s presentation at SES Chicago on “User Generated SEO” started with some actual user generated content from the audience. Before the session DeHaven gave 5 volunteers a bite sized Ghirardelli chocolate bar. In exchange for the treat he asked that each of the volunteers write a review of the chocolate and then share it with the rest of the audience.

What Was the Response?
The chocolate was called everything from waxy, to too sweet, messy, and melt in your mouth goodness. In contrast the packaging created by the Ghirardelli marketers was quite different, “take time to slow down and feel yourself melt with each bite.” As you can see the professional marketers took a much different approach than the consumers.

The Marketer vs. the Consumer
According to DeHaven 80-90% of total content on many major ecommerce sites is written by end users who come to the site and give their opinions or post reviews. He then proceeded to provide a few examples of what companies believed the best keywords for their product or services were and the actual keywords consumers used to describe the business. In both of the examples listed below the keyword lists were not at all aligned.

Restaurants
Marketing Keywords: romance, fine dining, gourmet food
User Generated Keywords: great drinks, partying, view

Cosmetics
Marketing Keywords: cleanser, gentle, healthy looking
User Generated Keywords: soap, younger, looking great

7 Principles of User Generated SEO

#1: Don’t Forget SEO Fundamentals
While user generated content can be extremely powerful it is important not to forget the basics such as link building, optimization, and proper tagging.

#2: Search Engines Get Bored
When Google bots are crawling your website they are looking for fresh and relevant content. If the bots return week after week and the content has not changed they become “bored” and will be less likely to return. In order to remain competitive in the online marketplace frequent updates are a must.

#3: The Primanti Principle
A Primanti sandwich is unique because of the French fries inside the sandwich. If you add too many fries to the Primanti it can become overwhelming for the user. Similarly as a marketer you want to make sure that you aren’t overwhelming Google with too many “French fries” but a reasonable combination of foundational information and user generated content.

#4: Beware of Dilution
Typical product descriptions are optimized and written by professional marketers, user reviews are not. While user generated content is important it has it’s place. Beware of what too much user generated content can do for your SEO.

#5: Unlock the Long-Tail Vault
Marketers are constantly working to determine what keywords users are typing and which ones will drive the highest ROI. An additional challenge is determining which content should be housed on the top-level domain and which ones are better suited for microsites.

#6: Ask For Content at Relevant Times
Spending time to determine when your audience will be most willing to write a review and determining their level of qualification for submitting a review is key. If you’re promoting a concert emailing attendees the morning before the concert and asking them to share their photos on the site is a great way to entice user generated content.

#7: Convert Reviewers into Advocates
It is important that marketers set next steps for reviewers. An example provided was that of a user that wrote a laptop review and then spent the next hour (in the middle of the work day) answering over 130 laptop questions asked by other users. If that user had a great experience using the laptop think of the number of people they are reaching and advocating to on behalf of the company selling the laptop.

I really enjoyed that DeHaven’s presentation covered the ways that content can be generated by users but also what we must do as marketers to facilitate, moderate, and encourage user generated content.

I’m curious to know how much of your content you believe is generated by users? If the number is low, do you have a plan for increasing interaction? If the number is high, what have you done well that encourages users to generate content on your behalf?

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. |
7 Principles for User Generated Content: Michael DeHaven SES Chicago 2011 | http://www.toprankblog.com