Partner Article
Facebook Competitions
So, you’ve set aside budget into creating an exciting social media competition and naturally you want to make sure the prize goes to a true brand advocate?
The best advice I can give you is not to worry about making sure it ends up in the hands of a superfan instead, try a pro-comper!
Pro-compers are the dedicated people who spend their time finding, entering and winning competitions, sometimes even as a full time job. Trying to protect your prize from them is a big mistake.
Give and take
Pro-compers are an influential, friendly and generous bunch who should be invited to join in all competitions as often as you can.
Why should you engage with them? Well, they can be responsible for rapid growth on your Facebook page. Because more than any other fan they understand, due to lots of experience, that there is no take without give. Having seen every competition that the internet has to offer, they know you may want something in exchange for a chance to win a bag of goodies, whether that’s their data or reposting a branded image of a cute cat. They want your prize, you want to market to them and their connections. Fine; nothing is free.
L, S and E
To the uninitiated L, S and E might look like a botched acronym for a prestigious university in London, in fact it means Liked, Shared and Entered in a Facebook context and it’s a pro-comper calling card. It’s simple enough, the user has entered your competition and in return, to show their appreciation, they have liked and shared it to ensure its spread across the platform. What’s more many competition fans will add ‘good luck everyone’. While they are competitive they’re generous too.
Like me and leave me
You may also be surprised to know that these Facebook users don’t disappear the moment the prize is drawn. We’ve hosted several competitions and the unlike rate following a competition winner announcement is far lower than you may expect. We’ve had far greater unlikes due to the posting the wrong content outside of promotions. These people are here to be entertained, so get your content mix right, with the promise of future competitions and you’ll hold on to these fans and you may also find they’re an engaged bunch perhaps due to the misplaced idea that actively engaging might give them a better chance of winning (you must chose randomly).
Finding pro-compers
Pro-compers aren’t hard to spot, for a start they’ll be the ones to comment on the quality of your prize, leave a thank you on the comment thread and write l,s&e. They will likely have a dedicated Facebook profile for competitions, ‘Abby Comps’ and of course they’ll be part of the influx of fans that have joined your page overnight. Be wary though that these dedicated Facebook profiles won’t carry the same valuable data or reach that their personal accounts would hold, however, they will unlock access to a very valuable network of engaged fans.
If your prize is a good one, you could spend the next 24 hours watching as the pro-comper community beavers away on your page. Joining, sharing and entering, moving on to a website where they post about your competition encouraging others to enter too.
At almost every stage these people are working as brand ambassadors driving impressions of your brand across Facebook, it truly is a reciprocal relationship and one that works for us.
You can find them online on the plethora of the websites dedicated to posting free to enter competitions; I’ll let you do this piece of research yourself!
Sales?
You want more than mere high-traffic and engagement on your Facebook page? Well if you operate in a similar business to ourselves you’ve just driven tens, dozens, hundreds or even thousands of cost-conscious users who know the value of worthwhile products and are prepared to put in hard work to find them.
My suggestion is to include an appropriate sales message close to a competition and analyse the results on your e-tail site.
Good luck, and treat pro-compers with the respect they deserve.
This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Sean Blanks .