Our Votigo.com Contest Community recently celebrated its two year anniversary. In that time we’ve powered over 3,000 user-generated photo and video contests!

In that same period, Votigo, Inc. as a company has focused on delivering custom contests and promotions directly to brands. We’ve worked with major brands including Sharpie, Gardenburger and L’Oreal to deliver compelling social media promotions and user-generated photo and video galleries.

With the increased demand for our branded solutions we’ve made the difficult decision to shutdown the Votigo.com community to focus on this aspect of our business. Effective April 15th, 2009 the community site and any photos and videos posted to it will no longer be available.

We’d like to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you for your contributions to the site and for making the Votigo.com Community an amazing place to meet new people and compete in fun contests.

If your business is interested in running a branded photo or video contest or social media promotions please visit http://www.votigo.com for more information.

Mike

It always amazes me the various ways our clients leverage the Votigo Platform to meet their objectives. The latest campaign to launch on our platform  is called MO Project , launched for our client CANFIT (California Adolescent Nutrition & Fitness Program). MO Project is a media contest for youth ages 13-18 who are encouraged to submit a poster or video about how they can improve the health in their community. Submissions are related to the idea that affordable, healthy food and safe & accessible areas for physical activity should be available to everyone.

What I really like about this campaign is its focus on youth. All entrants must be between 13-18 years of age. The process of creating entries will be a great way for kids to learn about living a healthy life, marketing, story telling and creativity.

More important than the chance for entrants to win a Wii or iPod Touch, their submissions will be shown to state and local representatives to help future policy in their communities.

Oh, and one more thing…. This is the first time we’ve integrated a twitter feed as a way for CANFIT to keep contest participants updated on the latest contest news. Check it out on the contest homepage.

An interesting report, “The ROI on Social Media Marketing”, from the Aberdeen Group today found that 63% of the companies in their survey (defined as best-in-class) planned to increase their social media marketing budgets this year.  The executive summary from the report states:

“The global economic recession has put more pressure than ever on chief marketing officers and other senior marketing practitioners to minimize marketing waste and maximize Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI). How can marketers trapped in a vortex of plunging consumer demand and growing budgetary constraints that have made it necessary to curtail or completely eliminate investments in traditional marketing channels and programs hope to attract, retain and increase the value of profitable customers? Aberdeen research indicates that at least part of the answer lies in harnessing the power of social media marketing to drive customer advocacy.”

As emarketer points out in their related article, “Companies are learning how to leverage social media and tap into the rising tide of consumers participating in social network sites, blogs, wikis and Twitter.”   We’re seeing this here at Votigo as well.  Our clients are increasingly using Twitter to supplement their promotion.  I like how the Mo Project Contest is utilizing their Twitter stream on their contest landing page to give updates on the project.  And running a contest on Facebook is an excellent way to engage consumers where they already are.  And for any social network or blog our Contest Widget is extremely easy to integrate and share.

Let us know what you think.

-Jim

Yesterday voting ended for a very successful contest we powered for Victoria’s Secret PINK in partnership with their agency Resource Interactive.  The Design-A-Tee contest called on the avid PINK fan base to design a t-shirt that would be sold online and in select stores. The winner also received a $500 PINK Shopping Spree.

Using a flash based design tool that gave users access to PINK colors, trademarks and logos made designing a tee super easy and the results proved it. There were over 33,000 submissions into the contest! The Victoria’s Secret PINK judges narrowed it down to 3 entries and the public was called upon to vote for their favorite.

5,326 votes were cast and the winner is…

Josyln Hopkins from Omaha, Nebraska. Here’s her winning design.

Using a mash-up tool to allow users to create a video or graphic design entry from existing assets is a great way to increase the number of submissions in a contest. Users can quickly create compelling entries without needing access to video cameras or editing software.

In partnership with Broadhead+Co and the Renewable Fuels Association Votigo is powering a combination photo and video contest called The Flex-fuel Challenge. To enter users produce a video, take a photo, or write a song about renewability. Prizes include a MacBook Air.

Increasingly our clients are creating contests that combine media types to offer users the greatest flexibly to express themselves. While video submissions engage visitors to a contest site the most, submitting a video can be too big of a hurdle for some to enter a contest. For those users, photo entries with supporting descriptions provide a great alternative and our clients get more submissions.

Deciding whether to do a video contest, a photo contest or a combination really depends on the objectives for a campaign. Understanding these objectives is always where we kick things off when strategizing  with our clients.