Some of our recent blog posts have focused on connecting you with your customers and using custom tabs on your Facebook Fan Page to increase engagement and sales. Contests and sweepstakes are one of the ways you can combine these two tactics, and start turning visitors into customers.
The Facebook Contest Myth
The common misconception for Facebook Fan Page contests is that running a contest will generate you a bunch of customers. While this can happen – we have done it with great results – it needs to be constructed with the right goal in mind. You see, contests will not inherently connect you with your visitors.
This sort of connection is formed by asking the right questions in the contest, and using the contest to trigger positive emotions. I am not talking about the chance to win a vacation, new car, or money. Those positive emotions are only there for the moment. Our aim is to establish something long lasting, not a fleeting connection.
Build a Fan Gate on Your Fan Page
You have seen these on Facebook – like our page to be entered to win a week vacation to some exotic place you have never been! Getting away for a week does sound great, doesn’t it? This type of setup is called a “Fan Gate”, and is used to generate a large number of fans. We’ll take a look at North Social’s Sweepstake app.
This app makes setting up a Fan Gate very simple. It will be displayed in your custom tabs on your Fan Page, and has the ability to creatively display your contest. The only problem is this Fan Gate has one purpose – to get fans. We can do better than that. Let’s build a connection and get some customers!
Comments Add Meaning To Fan Gates
Adding comments underneath your Fan Gate increases its power in several ways.
- It gives the opportunity for contestants to leave feedback.
- It allows contestants to be social.
- It increases your Fan Page’s Edge Rank.
- Commenters can invite their friends to the contest by tagging them.
- It allows you to establish a personal connection. More on this later!
Take a look at the photo below to see the results of adding a comments stream to your contest tab.
Give Visitors Something to Comment About
If you simply add a comment field to your contest they could comment about, well, anything! It is best if we clearly define what they should comment on to give some structure to this process. Here are some examples about comment topics.
- Tell a story about an experience. The best story wins a prize.
- Create a YouTube video about [subject] and share it.
- Set a goal for yourself or your business. This one is our favorite.
It is also the place to build that emotional connection. This is the connection that will turn your fans into loyal customers.
The Emotional Connection
More on goal setting! We like having people state their goals publicly. It not only inspires others to post their goals, generate ideas, and provide support, but it gives the goal meaning. They are sharing their goal with the world, and this public sharing is one of the best ways we have found to get that personal, emotional connection we have been talking about.
Commenting alone does not lead to this connection. You have to show that you care. You should care! Encourage others as they post their goals. Try to help those that are struggling. Perhaps someone set a goal too high for themselves – bring it down to a level that is attainable.
Our Personal Results and a Gift for You
The tips discussed above are part of one of our training systems – The Facebook Traffic System. It is full of information to drive traffic to your Fan Page. Not just any traffic mind you, traffic that will want to engage with you and make the transition from fan to customer. Enough about that though, we’re going to share with you our results from this contest method.
The Gift – The Facebook “Boomerang” Strategy
While we usually give this pdf as a reward for either opting in to our mailing list or purchasing one of our products, we’ve decided to go ahead and give it to you for free. Here is The Facebook Boomerang strategy.
When people comment in the Facebook comment section you put on your contest page, their friends see it. This is huge! The average facebook user has 400-600 friends. That is free exposure to a large number of people.
Now for the “boomerang” part. You can actually send commenter’s friends to a page that is different than the comment itself. Send them to a sales letter for increased sales. Send them to an opt-in form for more opt-ins. It’s that simple.
Our Results
By combining our contests with emotion and comments we have built our foundation for success. Using this strategy, we were able to generate over 15,000 new fans in a week, and over 5,000 new subscribers to our email list. Those are some pretty powerful numbers, and all of it was free.
If you want more strategies like these, check out our Traffic System.
We hope this guide gave you some new insight on how to run successful contests on your Facebook Fan Page, and get the type of connection to your fans that you want.
