Features & Services

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Why Run a Social Media Promotion?

Having an active audience on social media can be of great value to brands today. Social media is not new to today’s marketing mix, but the tactics used to access niche audiences continue to build.

Many modern social media tools for brand posting and social media monitoring are great ways to distill engagement metrics, but what about when it comes to converting fans into customers?

Social media promotions are a great way to incentivize fans to take actions that bring them closer to your brand. By including an exciting chance to win a prize (either by random drawing or by making a contest submission), you drive up the interaction rate and share rate of your social posts.

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How do Sweepstakes and Contests on Social Media Work?

Running your digital promotion on social media can help both accomplish and boost your goals for marketing to your social followers. Some of these goals may include:

  • Increasing your number of followers
  • Increasing your number of views
  • Tracking number of shares and % share rate of views

These are great engagement measures to track over time, and our clients have certainly seen a lift in these engagement metrics when running a sweepstakes or contest on social media.

You can use promotions to incentivize various action on social media. This really comes down to what we at Realtime Media consider a “qualifying entry”. A qualifying entry can consist of a user’s postal code, age, or even a qualifying purchase. But in this case it is a combination of those plus an action or set of actions taken on social media channels. Here is an example list of a few actions you might look to incentivize on social media:

  • “Tag a friend in a comment on this post to be entered”
  • “Follow our brand page to be entered”
  • “Post a photo or video with #BrandHashtag #ProductSweepstakes for an entry”

💡Compliance Tip: Much like sponsored content posted by Influencers, promotion hashtags that gain users an entry should have “Sweepstakes” or “Contest” in the hashtag. As deemed by the FTC, this lets consumers know they may be consenting to the terms of a promotion’s Official Rules

See Also: Social Media Use Policies: What actions can you incentivize on social media?

So now that you know what some social media promotion entries may look like, here’s how Realtime Media can help you manage your social media promotion and be sure it is fully compliant.

Realtime Media’s Role Your Goal or Need
1. Determine what your goals are. “I want to incentivize users to share their experience with a new product.”
2. Determine what is required to earn an ‘entry’. “Users should upload a picture or video unboxing their product and use hashtags #BrandHashtag #ProductUnboxing”
3. At Realtime Media, we set up our Social Media Admin Tool to listen to your chosen social networks and pull in qualified entries. “I want to be able to browse all the social content that users are submitting to the promotion, in one place”
4. You use our Admin Tool Client Portal to browse through content where you can screen entries to see if they are qualified for the sweepstakes or contest. “I want to make sure my promotion is generating quality content and maybe even reach out to some fans to engage them and even re-share or re-use their posts”
5. We act as your third-party administrator and can randomly select a winner if it is a sweepstakes, otherwise you can use our Admin Tool’s rating system to score entries to find the winner. “I want to be sure I’m compliant if I need a winner selected at random, I also want to be able to judge entries to narrow down the best one from multiple social media channels.”
6. Approved and screened entries can be pushed live to a gallery on your website or microsite to spread the social engagement and display an authentic brand story. “I want to be able to showcase the great social buzz my promotion is getting and also let non-social fans and customers see the great experience other fans and consumers are having with their new product.”

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Collect First-Party Data from Your Social Followers

Social media promotions, in the form of sweepstakes (giveaways) or contests, definitely help cut through the clutter on social media channels to boost interaction rate. However the critical element of a social media promotion is the moment you capture
the user’s first-party data on a promotion microsite. Let’s look at the user flow of 2 social media promotions: one that is entirely on social channels, and one that uses social media to drive users to a promotion microsite:

Goal: Promotion Entirely on Social Media Promotion with a Registration Microsite
Impressions Promoted Post Impression Promoted Post Impression
Engagement Action Taken Like Post Like Post
Earned Media Impact Like and Share with Friends Like and Share with Friends
Conversion Action Tags a Friend in a Comment for an Entry Clicks to Microsite
Acquisition: Marketable Data N/A Capture registration information (i.e. email address, zip code, language, etc.)
Bonus: Earned Media Impact N/A Registrant has now entered and shares that chance with trackable link out to their followers.
Extra Incentive N/A Registrant’s followers that come to the promotion microsite through share link earns the referring registrant an extra entry.
Goal: Promotion Entirely on Social Media Promotion with a Registration Microsite
Drive Social Engagement
Acquire Marketable Data 🚫

Social media promotions are a great way to engage your current fans, get them to share exciting chances to win prizes with their friends, and get them to click through to content or tagged co-brand profiles. But combining a social media promotion with
an engaging microsite can further extend the impact and goals of your social promotion by driving new registrants into your marketing database.

UP NEXT IN THIS GUIDE:
Social Media Integrations: Facebook

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Social Media Integrations: Facebook

Facebook

Entity and Content Status Details
Post: Text with #hashtag
Post: With the brand tagged
Comment on a Post: Text Only
Comment on a Post: with a Friend Tagged
Photo: In a post ✅ℹ
Photo: In a post with the brand tagged
Like: User likes a post or brand page 🚨
UP NEXT IN THIS GUIDE:
Why Run a Social Media Promotion?