As people begin their Christmas present hunt, you want to showcase how you can meet their needs and now.  A great way to get your name circulating is to set up a contest. People are always looking for ways to tighten the belt around Christmas, so a contest that saves some money will always be a winner.

As Facebook changed its rules on contests lately, this would be a great medium to generate hype around your contest. Have a good read of the rules first!

 What's in it for me?

• Sales
• Leads
• Referrals
• Social media ‘likes’ or followers
• Increase of social media presence (i.e. more people interacting with your page/profile)

Vital information:

• Where is the contest being held? I.e. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest
• Start date and end date
• What people actually have to do to enter? Buy your product, spend a certain amount, like your page, comment on a post, retweet, pin, submit a photo or post to your page
• Contest conditions
• How winner will be drawn
• How and when winner will be notified by
• What happens if winner is not able to be reached
• How long will the prize last for? - is there an expiry date?
• What your prize is- your product/service, or a product/ service that you don’t sell i.e. overseas trip or car

Once you have these sorted out, get your best copywriter to come up with an amazing spiel that will capture your audience’s attention. You really want to sell your idea and business, while also getting people excited. Linking the contest to your website is also a great way to create a flow on effect from the contest, to your website.

After kick starting your contest, it is important to keep the buzz up- remind people that it is going on, and what they can do to enter. Social media is great for this, as people interacting with the post or your page, will keep your page at the top of other people’s timelines. 

When the contest draws to a close, make sure to make a big deal out of the end result- this is your last contest post that *hopefully* a lot of people have become invested in, so make the drum roll a good one!

After the contest is over, don’t go quiet on the social media platform, hopefully you have got some more likes, so keep people talking by continually posting new things to bring people back.