Social Media Contests: Benefits Beyond Traditional Campaigns

Big brands have been leveraging social technologies to encourage community and individual participation in contests for quite some time. The last half of 2009, however, has seen an explosion of innovative social media contests across the most popular outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Benefits for brands (aside from the obvious exposure, awareness, etc...) include:

• Content Collection - content that is submitted by participants is owned by the brand, therefore a successful contest can generate a stock of creative images, videos, or stories that can be re-purposed for future promotions.
  
• User Experience/Message Testing - by exposing participants to a set of messages, site content, or other creative work brands that are listening to the chatter can make informed tweaks to an ongoing campaign.
• Advocacy Building - a smart social media contest disburses smaller, yet still valuable, prizes among more participants. An ongoing contest from Lexli International, for example, offers one grand prize and ten runners up. By reaching out to a broader pool of winners and soliciting them for further participation in the brand, a company can create its own group of influential online advocates.

Other innovative social media contests in market today:

Champion's What's Your Everest Contest

Know of other ongoing contests? Let me know by commenting below.

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