Sue Edworthy Arts Planning

Disclaimer: There’s nothing to win here today, although you could follow or like me out of sheer interest.

Another part of my awesome coffee with Sean Howard was a bit of a chat about social media contests – do they work?

It depends on what you mean by ‘work’.  Everyone loves a contest, and everyone loves a chance to win something, and have been doing it for ages, whether you’re the Prize Winner of Defiance Ohio  or retweeting on the fly between appointments.

I think they can work in terms of bumping up your followers list. At first I was skeptical as in, okay you’ve come here to win a contest, and someone did, but it wasn’t you. Will you become what I call the “forgotten follower” – a follower who clicked “like” and promptly forgot they were following you? High numbers, no interaction?

Possibly. But what we need to remember is that every time someone clicks like or RTs you, even if it’s to win something, your product just expanded by a percentage of that person’s followers. So now maybe the forgotten follower has indeed forgotten about you – but now their folks know about you as well – and maybe they’ve been wanting to know more about you, and didn’t do anything about it, until a RT reminded them. And now they’re a follower too. So now you have two types of folks on your list – your high interaction evangelists and folks who are just spreading the word for you with every like and retweet. Not bad for the price of a prize.

Something to remember – make it easy to vote, like, click, fan etc. Nothing more discouraging that going to vote on something and seeing a fan page riddled with comments such as, “I want to vote but can’t figure out how to!” Make it a one-two click. If it’s more than that, it had better be a seriously awesome prize. And you must monitor! You need to market your contests if you want people to enter – it’s similar to a Facebook event page, you can’t just slap it up there and walk away. Raise your hand if you knew about these sites:

• ContestHound
• ContestPad
• OnlineSweepstakes
• Contestformoms
• ContestBlogger
• About.comBlogContests
• About.comContestsandSweepstakesForum

You can submit your contest to them. I KNOW, right?!  You just opened yourself up waaayyyy past your current list of subscribers and followers.

Incidentally – give good prizes. People automatically look to their inventory (performance tickets, screening tickets, etc) for quick and dirty contests. I say take it a step further – for example, if you’re giving away tickets to a performance piece based on a book or a film, why not throw in the book or DVD along with it? Put the prize in one of your company tote bags.Step up your prizes a bit, open up the product a bit. It adds a little something extra to your contest. Now go like things!

SIDE NOTES

Ninja Funk Orchestra is fresh off their triumphant CD release at Toronto’s Mod Club, and a packed house at Ottawa’s Mercury Lounge, Toronto’s  Ninja Funk Orchestra is thrilled to bring NinjaTek to the legendary Horseshoe Tavern fans as part of the TO Funk Rock Extravaganza May 27,  along with the Elastocitizens and Snipe.

Very pleased to announce that Theatre 20 is on board for PR solutions over here at Sue Edworthy Arts Planning – Theatre 20 is Toronto’s newest musical theatre company that formed by twenty of Canada’s leading musical theatre actors as a vehicle for musical theatre in this country. Some incredibly talented folks on board in every aspect and I am looking forward to working with them on their concert Driven to Score.

Along the lines of retweeting and liking, take a wander over to my PSA about Facebook groups to pages and add your page to the like list.