How to Build a Great Contest

How to Build a Great Contest

vía SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

So many websites are currently doing contests and you notice the size of this industry when looking at specialized websites which index all the contests online. So I analyzed about 20 existing contest webpages in my niche and took all the best ideas plus added some of my own magic to condense them into one ultimate contest page.

If you want to start a Facebook & Twitter contest, you're in the right place.

Building my contest page, I had a few goals in mind. What was my target? Anybody that speaks French (it's a French website), that has a Facebook or Twitter account and that's interested in laptop computers (the niche of my website). I needed to find what on-page elements had to be present in order to create the maximum amount of buzz and convert visitors into participants.

List of on page elements to include on your contest page. They are in order of how my page was built.

1. One great image at the top of your contest page. This will be the graphic identity of your contest so make it nice, include your logo if you have one. I also included a picture of the products they could win.
2. Describe your contest (in your text, include links to various pages on your site. Your contest page will receive backlinks and should have a high PR. By deep-linking to your articles, you'll send some link juice):
   1. Why you are doing this contest? Your site's 3rd anniversary? A new product just came out?
   2. What prizes are offered? Include more than one!
   3. How to participate? If there's more than one way of participating, make sure you insist that they should participate using both methods.
   4. Include buttons for visitors to participate. Make it easy for them! They should need to click and voila, done.
   5. Now you can add more information about your contest. What are the details?
      1. When does it end?
      2. How many winners?
      3. How will you contact the winners and when will the prizes be sent?
   6. Add more details on the various prizes. If it's a laptop, give the specs.
   7. Include a photo of the first, second and/or third prize. They should want it!
   8. Conclude by thanking your audience for their participation and asking them to send the contest to a friend by email. I had included a button in javascript (sharethis) they just had to hover over to get the email form.
   9. Add the comment form. If you are using Wordpress be careful! By default, the comment form goes under all the existing comments. If someone has to scroll down 100's of comments to leave a comment, he won't. I had to modify my php wordpress template.
   10. Note: To keep the page loading quickly (speed is important for SEO), I configured Wordpress to only show the last 20 comments in order of earliest to oldest. It would have been ridiculously slow if I was showing all 907 comments! WP or the plugin All in One SEO adds canonical urls pointing to the original contest page URL, so multiple pages of comments won't get separately indexed thus creating duplicate content.

To get a strong buzz around your contest you need to use the power of social media. Luckily for you, it's also how they should participate. Here's where the magic happens.

To participate via Facebook:

A visitor must click the LIKE button (social plugin) which you have added yourself into the page. This is linked to your Facebook page (you need one!) which receives an additional LIKE (It also posts a link on their wall).

Second, they have to click the Facebook Share button. This posts your contest link onto their Facebook wall. Make sure your page TITLE and the first paragraph of text are well written and attractive because all their friends will now see your link in their activity page. Some say using LIKES and SHARES are the same, they both post something on their wall. It's up to you to use just LIKE or both.

Finally, I asked visitors to post a comment on the page. This will be useful to get their email address to contact them. They will give you a valid email!

Everybody that participates via Facebook will advertize your contest on their wall for all their friends to see. You'll get a lot of additional participants, people who would never have found your page otherwise!

To participate via Twitte:

A visitor must Tweet your specific message. You need to include a few important things within the 140 characters. ex:

Win a #laptop! Retweet this message & follow @YOURNAME to participate! #YOURHASHTAG http://www.bit.ly/YOURCONTESTURL

Include the prize(s). Explain how they can participate via Twitter. Include your own unique Hash Tag (awesome for statistics). Shortened URL to your contest (Great for stats also!)

It's pretty easy to create the Twitter link. Start with http://twitter.com/?status= then add your tweet. You mustn't have any spaces or special characters. Spaces should be replaced by %20. Search for an online tool to convert your tweet if needed.

Secondly, I asked them to follow me via Twitter. Follow @yourtwittername linked to my Twitter account.

Lastly, they needed to leave a comment on the page with the URL to their tweet. You also get their real email addresses this way. 

Everybody that participates via Twitter will have a tweet on their feed for all their followers to see. If you get a few big fish, you'll get loads of RT and new followers that way.

Tip if using Wordpress. You'll have a lot of various codes inside your post (javascript...). Wordpress might modify your code when you switch to VISUAL mode so it's important to stay in HTML mode. I built my entire post inside notepad and I'd paste the HTML code from there. This saved me a number of times because Wordpress had modified my code in some way.

How could I have improved my contest?

If my site was a little bigger, I would have prepared a nice video with a pretty lady explaining the rules and asking people to participate. Video marketing is huge and if done properly it would have been a great source of visitors.

Facebook is a lot more powerful than Twitter mostly because there are just so many more people using it. Twitter users often have a Facebook accounts but the opposite is not always true. With both platforms, I was truly impressed at how easy it was to create a buzz. If they have something to gain from sharing your message, they'll happily complete the actions you request of them as long as you don't make it too complicated.

Now its time to try your own one...