Whether you’re readying for your first foray into social media promotions or you’re a veteran of engaging directly with your customers through these digital channels, you may find yourself wondering, “Where do I launch my next branded social media campaign?”


Here are 4 ideas to get you into the arena.


1) Facebook: It may seem obvious at this point, but the World’s Most Widely Used Social Media Network is a great place to start. Boasting 600M users and counting, Facebook is where users “Like” brands 50M times per day, according to @LeenaRao via @TechCrunch. Facebook treads the impossible balance of centering on genuine, person-to-person interaction, while also still being a widely-accepted forum for brands to interact with users in authentic, unobtrusive ways. Your Facebook page is a familiar, recognizable place for users to encounter your brand, and a contest or sweepstakes is a proven way to expand the audience. And Facebook features such as Like-Gating, Connect, news feed notifications and other branded sharing functions make it very accessible for users, and easy to inspire a viral effect. UK Style By French Connection launched an easy-to-enter sweepstakes via Facebook to promote the brand at Sears. Users enter the sweepstakes to win the UK Style Tour Car, and can share photos of their own personal UK Style.

2) Microsites: Prior to the broad adoption of Facebook and long before anyone had uttered “Twitter,” there were microsites. Concise, user-friendly websites with highly visual designs, linked to but separate from a company’s main website, dedicated to a specific product or service, launch, event or other singular purpose. Even with the proliferation of new social media channels, having a branded microsite to serve as the primary destination, the campaign home to which all traffic for a contest or sweepstakes can be driven, remains incredibly useful.  Control the microsite’s design, it’s functionality, and how users interact with it- including generous linking to Facebook, Twitter, and other sharing services. Destinations like NovaSure’s Get Back To Life Video Contest and The Follett Challenge: Recognizing Innovation, are thoughtful extensions of the parent brand, but more importantly, completely dedicated to their standalone video contest campaigns: For NovaSure, sharing stories of how their procedure improves womens’ health and lifestyles. And for Follett, tales from schools who have used technology innovation in their libraries to improve student engagement and information literacy. Both incredibly important missions for highly respected brands, and both executed on the foundation of a microsite.


3) foursquare: When Starwood Hotels and Resorts launched a new Resorts web destination to promote the loyalty program Starwood Preferred Guest and its 200 luxury resort destinations, SPG not only orchestrated the SPG Pack Your Bags Giveaway and gave away 10 resort stays to lucky winners from 20 nations, it then extended the brand message to foursquare, the wildly popular mobile check-in platform. SPG invites users to connect their SPG and foursquare accounts, earn Starpoints for check-ins via foursquare, and get more chances to win Free Resort Night Awards. Tremendous cross-platform branding, from corporate sites to microsites to one of the hottest emerging social platforms.


4) All of the above: It’s a marketer’s dream: design the perfect brand promotion and extend it across multiple social channels where users congregate and interact. Launch a promotion to a receptive audience with a Facebook contest application.  Extend it to users on the go with a custom mobile app. Add in a foursquare check-in component.  Offer the same call-to-action via Twitter. And tie it all back to the a custom microsite, with a sortable gallery of user-generated photo submissions, voting and commenting, and sharing tools for email, Facebook, Twitter and beyond. Find your customers where they are, and make it easy for them to participate, regardless of their favorite social venue.

Team Detroit is no stranger to accolades for its Ford Motor Company work, so it isn’t merely to sing praises that we highlight The Global Ford Ranger Challenge. The latest Ford social media promotion also illustrates some important mobile functionality and user experience queues- not to mention that it’s visually striking with great alignment of brand and call-to-action, and powered by Votigo.


The just-launched Global Ranger Challenge asks users to submit photos, videos or essays of how they would put Ranger’s Dynamic Stability Control to the test, in competition for a chance to attempt and film their challenges and ultimately win a new Ranger. One entrant promised to relive a long-ago family road trip; another would head straight to Ayers Rock for some off-roadin’ in the Outback. A quick browse of the Challenges already submitted is enough to inspire a dream holiday to the home of Uluru.


Viewers can see featured entries and share them via Facebook, Twitter or email, but must register and log-in to submit, comment or vote. Sharing drives traffic back to the microsite-FordRangerChallenge.com.au- which then links to the Australian home page for the truck.


To accommodate the campaign’s incredible geographic reach- it launched first in Australia as homage to the truck’s design and engineering heritage but will ultimately extend to 11 countries, from South Africa to Thailand- entries can be submitted from any mobile device, including smart phones but also feature phones and basic handsets. A must for any brand launching an international promotion with a critical mobile component is to extend access to the broadest range of devices possible, not to mention to get expert guidance on the local regulations in every jurisdiction where the contest or sweeps is open.

As we often say, there’s no better forum than Facebook for interacting with customers to expand a brand’s audience, drive sales and collect great feedback.  Promotions- like contests or sweepstakes with a viral call-to-action to a huge crowd of potential customers- are one of the most effective ways to expand that audience.


Earlier this week, Facebook released its latest revised Promotions Guidelines. The consensus among the Votigo team is that they are simplified and great for business. Relaxing restrictions on categories like alcohol and dairy, or how minors may be address with promotions, only expands the possibilities of what brands can already do to authentically engage Facebook users.


But the revisions also give brands added responsibility in following Facebook’s Ad Guidelines and other policies, plus the regulations of any state, country or locale where a promotion is open. In other words,  more than ever, building buzz on the world’s most interactive social media site is best not navigated by a novice.


The stakes: all the followers and brand equity you’ve already built on your page. And the upside is all the potential that lies ahead, to be built on that foundation.  A Facebook Preferred Developer Consultant like Votigo is not only equipped to help businesses stay within the Promotions Guidelines.  We’re also still in the best position to show you the fundamentals and customize Facebook video and photo contest apps, sweepstakes and other solutions that have the greatest impact.

Every brand stands for something.  The highest quality.  The cheapest. The most luxurious. The happiest. The toughest. The quirkiest. The one with the most unique/innovative/irreplaceable characteristic that no competitor has ever offered.


One of the most powerful ways to communicate your brand’s meaning to customers in a competitive market is to let them do the talking.  That’s where a powerful User-Generated Content campaign comes in.  With UGC, you empower your customers to tell the story of your brand.


Digital media is the most open forum in the history of commerce for giving customers a voice.  Some of the most dynamic destinations on the web- from YouTube to CNN iReport to Wikipedia- are built on a foundation of users contributing content.  For your UGC promotion, a microsite dedicated to the campaign, plus social venues like Facebook, are the ideal places to host a campaign featuring your fans’ creative work.


Ask Votigo’s Account Services team about the keys to a great UGC promotion, and you’ll get fundamental advice from savvy marketers:  Accessible entry requirements that don’t require entrants to climb a mountain or do anything outside of the typical person’s reach.  A great theme; kids and animals are always a draw, but the contest should be authentically tied to the brand.  And great incentives.


Great brands from every industry are asking their users to create content that is authentically tied to their products.   Check out three Votigo-powered UGC contests in different stages:

• Yahoo Messenger capped off its one-month UGC promotion Faceoff: Which Emoticon Are You? on Facebook by crowning a winner whose photo submission of acting out a new emoticon (facial expression symbols that are shorthand for emotion in chat sessions) that won the most user votes.  The winning emoticon: “Whatever!”

• Folgers is set to announce the finalists in its second annual Best Part of Wakin’ Up Jingle Contest. Entrants produced their own renditions of the iconic Folgers jingle to enter via microsite or mobile. The final quintet will go to New York for the Grand Prize Audition in front of celebrity judge Kara DioGuardi- and a chance at $25,000.

• And Febreeze Carpet Care just launched the It’s a Dance Video Contest, motivating the audience to submit videos of themselves dancing to the tune of six downloadable music tracks while cleaning their floors.  The promotions spans the rest of 2011 and will award monthly winners and one grand prize. And every entrant walks away with coupons for the Procter & Gamble cleaning products.

These UGC promotions ask the audience for photos and videos that directly connect the contestants to the brand: facial contortions fit for an emotional chat, memorable covers of a coffee-sipping classic, and rhythmic dances that convey floor-cleaning fun.  All three encourage their audiences to spread the word about the contest- and the brand- and provide incentives with great prizes and experiences.  And all three put the customer in charge of telling the story.

These days we see the word Engagement so often- even on our own site- that it may begin to lose meaning. Don’t let it. Engaging an audience means something.


Put yourself in the mindset of a potential lifetime customer who just bought something from your website, visited your store, or saw your ad for the first time. Somewhere near the end of her maiden experience with your company- your brand- she saw Facebook.com/yourpage. So she took a few seconds and visited.


Now what? If you’ve got a static brand page, she reads the About, looks at a picture you uploaded months ago, and leaves. That’s just a visit. Unless you engage her.


A well-choreographed engagement- be it a photo contest, sweepstakes or some other interaction- does a few important things. It collects a little bit of information about them- and their permission for you to stay in touch. It reinforces what your brand means by asking them to think about it in visual or written terms. It shows them how other people perceive your brand. It asks them to think about who else they should tell. And it gives them a reason to check back in with you.


Case in point: American Express Canada. Amex – which maintains an aspirational luxury brand in the staid realm of personal or small business finance – doesn’t stop at a static Facebook brand page that funnels visitors to their website. They offer additional engagement- like their Votigo-powered Gold Rewards Card Dream Travel Contest, which asks visitors to upload photos of cherished travel and vote on each others’ dream getaways - that reinforces the image of their brand as the one that makes such experiences happen. From there, it’s not a huge leap for customers to pull their cards from their wallets and book that travel, or for newcomers to click through and apply for an account. See Sara Inés Calderón’s coverage of the campaign at Inside Facebook.


Engagement. It’s not just fancy marketing slang. It means something. For American Express Canada, it means nearly 500 submissions and counting, a trove of priceless photos and travel blurbs, and a lot of buzz, and likely, new lifetime customers.