The summer months can traditionally be a tough time to get something good going in marketing. Brand managers throttle back spend to ensure they don’t overshoot their budgets by midyear. Media planners and creatives head for the coasts for well-deserved holidays. Traditional media programmers broadcast a season of reruns and (admittedly riveting- don’t tell anyone that some Votigo people are captivated by this) reality fare. In short, July and August are historically surrendered by marketers.

But social media changes everything, enabling a year-round calendar of opportunity to engage your audience and reach potential new customers. Launching a summertime Contest or Sweepstakes on across social media- from Facebook to microsites to mobile platforms to Twitter to YouTube- is one effective way to harness social media and jumpstart your audience.

Make sure to check out the Summer Social Marketing Sweepstakes Powered by Votigo - a preview of our Sweepstakes app and an opportunity for you to win a $5,000 credit to run a social media promotion through the Votigo platform.  Meanwhile, here are 4 reasons that Social Media Contests and Sweepstakes are a great way for businesses and brands to burst through the dog days of summer.

1) Contests Are Opportunities to Engage Customers And Tell Your Story

The best contests generate repeat audience participation. An ideal lifecycle for a participant in a Photo Contest on Facebook, for example, would look something like this:

User receives an email from a friend to vote on friend’s submission -> He visits the Facebook Brand Page and “Likes” it -> Casting a a vote for his friend’s photo, he gets swept up by the contest’s stunning graphics or compelling incentive -> He decides to enter, finding a great picture to submit or taking a new one -> He shares his entry via email, Facebook, Twitter and more to friends, asking for their votes -> He checks back frequently to see how many votes he has or whether he made the Final round…

Contests give your brand’s audience relevant reasons to engage, or check-in with your frequently.  They are opt-in by nature- participants choose to submit, comment, or vote- always a more powerful form of engagement. And they help tell the story of your brand.

2) Contests Put Your Customers In The Spotlight To Create Content

A well-designed contest conveys your brand message quickly and effectively…and then gets out of the way, allowing your audience to take center stage, tapping their creativity and asking potential customers to share their favorite picture or produce a clever video. American Cancer Society does just that with it’s Create More Birthdays Contest & Sweepstakes, asking participants to submit art or music inspired by the organization’s life-saving work.   Flipping through the early submissions is already inspiring as entrants tell their stories in visually or with music.

Similarly The Drummer of Tomorrow Video Contest, presented by Mapex and other percussion and music brands, continues to generate soul-thumping videos from hardcore and hobbyist drummers alike, all competing for over $50,000 in prizes.

Why is having your own content important to your brand?  Major brands are finding that producing and publishing their own content increases not only brand awareness but also subscribers and leads, writes Shane Snow on Mashable.  Snow points to inbound marketing expert Hubspot’s recent study that shows that a content-driven marketing strategy can drive a 4x increase in leads within a few months. There is no more authentic way to get creative content for your brand than asking your audience to generate it. So contests that drive UGC can be an important part of a content marketing strategy.

3) Contests Are An Effective Way to Connect To Big Events

There are few better ways to motivate an audience than with the possibility of winning a trip to a huge championship, VIP access to a major concert, or an expenses-paid dream vacation. Great contests capture the buzz of the destination or event they’re tied to. Check out the Four Points Score Tickets Sweepstakes, where Starwood Preferred Guest offers the chance to win a serious travel experience to anyone booking a room by July 15: an all-expense-paid trip to the 2011 Major League Soccer AT&T All-Star Game in New York City.

Contests are an effective vehicle for offering an authentic incentive for customers to spread the word.  Nothing is as authentic as getaway travel to an event or destination that reflects the message of an aspirational travel, hospitality or luxury brand. What would be a fitting giveaway for your brand?

4) Contests Can Easily Involve Babies and Adorable Animals

It’s been said time and again: you want participation?  Ask for photos of babies and pets.  Not only do social media audiences simply respond to these adorable submissions; participants generally have such photos or videos handy on their laptops or mobiles- removing a barrier for quickly entering to your contest.  Zulily- the daily deals site for moms and babies- has a simple branding rationale to ask for photos in their Zulily Cuties photo contest, which features a gallery full of adorable pictures and rolling monthly winners of shopping credits.  But even for brands that don’t center on gear for babies and kids, tapping into parents’ affinities for their children (and pets) is a proven tactic.

There you go- 4 Good Reasons that you can get social media contests working for your brand- even in the summer months.  Stay tuned early next week for 4 More Good Reasons.  Have a great weekend.

If you’re like us and made the near-cross country trek last week to join the citywide festivities at Internet Week New York, your head was still spinning into the weekend from the abundant content, impassioned speakers and spirited meet-ups that marked the 4th annual Manhattan pilgrimage for thousands of laptop-toting, mobile checking-in, tsotchke-collecting, iced coffee-swilling, sweltering heat suffering, blogging, Tweeting, Facebooking mavens of the digital realm.

While our schedule was jammed from jackhammer-on-10th Avenue sunrise through OMMA Social on Thursday (which we proudly sponsored) to rooftop-party sundown, we had time to take note of certain recurring themes  that strike us as shareable. With a heavy nod toward social media promotions, and generous paraphrasing, here are 5 gems on doing social just right, as heard on the streets last week in New York.

(Note: So good was the word-on-the-street that we’ll break it up over two days…)

1) “…Roll out the welcome mat…”

Not simply because new users are visiting your microsite, reading your Twitter feed or logging on to your Facebook page for the first time should you spend an inordinate amount of time on your landing page . It’s been the rule of the internet for almost two decades, and the same now applies to your social media presence. Carefully design and test any destination page to your sites or microsites. Nail the description on your Twitter home. And on Facebook, invest in great tabs.  It may be the difference between a quick bounce and a return visitor, but more important, it’s as much a representation of your brand as your logo, your ad on TV, or your booth at the trade show. See an example in the home tab for Craftsman’s Finding American Treasures photo contest landing tab on Facebook. It’s visually striking, to the point, and an authentic homage to the timeless tool brand.

2) “…Define your audience…”

Know your audience…target your audience…understand your audience…cultivate your audience…  You’ve heard it so much  that it’s almost cliche.  But it could never be more true.  Social media is not mass media, despite the opportunity to reach a vast audience.  Every component of a social channel can be geared to a carefully defined audience.  The narrower the target, the more interactive their response will be. Great promotions- like great brands- don’t try to be all things to all people. This theme comes up repeatedly in a forum like OMMA Social- so much so that we can break it down further:

(part 1): Address an Affinity

Identify the affinities- professional interests, personal passions- that unite your audience and center your social media efforts on them. We are not all drummers even though we all may wish we could channel an inner John Bonham. But percussion & music publishing brands Mapex, Remo, Zildjian, Vic Firth and Alfred didn’t worry about targeting the whole universe when they launched the Drummer of Tomorrow user-generated video contest. They simply targeted the whole universe of drummers with a relevant call-to-action (and extremely relevant prizes).  The reaction from the community has been a robust and heart-pounding flood of entries from drummers laying down their beats over the downloadable soundtracks.

(part 2): Multiple Channels for Multiple Audiences


Not all customers share the same perspective.  Hopefully they all end up at the same cash register or check out page, but they arrive at your brand with very different attitudes and motivations.  Whichever audiences you are pursuing, interact with them uniquely.  Case in point: not only is  Mercury Marine’s Mercury Film Festival a well-integrated user-generated video contest microsite (with complimentary coverage on the brand’s homepage) and again, great prizes for entrants; the “celebration of all things marine” also offers a sweepstakes with additional prizes for the voters, the company’s partners and dealers, and even its employees.  These other parties- not typically eligible for an open contest- are often the best advocates for spreading the word. Mercury Marine is giving all segments of the audience their due in this contest.

Tune in tomorrow for Part II of Heard on the Streets in New York: How To Do Social Media Marketing

Further reading: SmartBrief just published a follow-up Internet Week / Social Media recap written by Heidi Cohen of Riverside Marketing Strategies.

In the hustle of a shortened holiday Memorial Day week, it can be hard enough to find Inbox Zero, let alone think strategically about maximizing your social media presence for the rest of the year. And given that it’s nearly 90 degrees on an early June day in Boulder, it may seem an unnatural time to think ahead to the holidays. But today we encourage you to do just that.

Building an audience of passionate, loyal, active customers on Facebook, Twitter and other social media channels, as you know, is an evolving effort that takes an investment of time. Gone are the days of hastily throwing together a Facebook page and expecting users to find you; of waiting for the end of the year to scrum for leftover/experimental ad budget to spend on last minute ads; of being confident that merely reposting your latest products/services on Facebook is the best you can do.

It takes time to launch an effective social media promotional campaign - a contest or sweepstakes, for example, that expands your audience, brings followers closer to your brand and finds new customers, too.  Crafting creative that delivers a high-impact brand message. Customizing the design to fit your brand and all platforms. Adhering to the regulations of the social media channels and various locales you’ll launch in. Integrating a well-designed campaign across media- social and traditional.

Yes, it can be done incredibly fast, especially in partnership with a savvy partner. But why leave it to the last minute to do something spectacular?

This year we propose taking an Upfront Mentality to your social media promotions. Think of planning your social media marketing like TV ad buyers think of their budgets: They look at the calendar, see what program pillars are going to drive eyeballs to the hottest new shoes, and allocate their investments accordingly. They even have big fancy preview events to celebrate the practice. And they invest heavily in upfronts.

Especially if you’re a retailer,  consumer goods or services brand, think about tethering your social media promotions to the signature consumer events of the year.  Here are 3 ideas for Upfront-style events that, like next season’s TV schedule to a broadcast planner, can be the pillars of your Social Media Upfronts calendar.

1. Father’s Day: While it’s all but too late to get in on the paternal celebration- which doubles as the unofficial start of America’s grilling/camping/boating/outdoor fun season- Dad’s Day is a great illustrator of an event that generates a targeted, promotions-oriented audience. (Mother’s Day is no slouch as a retail bonanza, either. Next year!) Brands like Nautica get the appeal of this special mid-June date and tailor their promotions accordingly. Nautica’s Faces of Father’s Day Contest - submissions are due Friday- is just one example.
2. Back to School: Don’t tell the kids, who are just now singing School’s Out for Summer, but retailers are deep into planning for the 2nd biggest commerce season of the year, the magical window of July and  August that long ago transcended paper and pencils and became a $21B+ family shopping spree. Given that consumers have more options than ever, and that the lead time to plan a killer Back-To-School promotion is an ideal 6-8 weeks as of today, why not lock in this annual rite as the first big pillar of your Social Media Upfronts schedule?
3. Black Friday and Cyber Monday: The traditional red-letter date on the annual retail calendar- and its relatively modern digital cousin- continue their reign as the focal point of the retail promotions year.  Allow your brand the next few months to do it right in 2011: figure out what you’re going to promote, design the quintessentially engaging social media campaign, and participate in a shoppers holiday worth nearly $11B on the Friday after Thanksgiving alone.

Scary as it is, the holidays will be here before we know it.  As social media auteur Brian Solis is known to say, “the reality is that you get out of social media what you invest in it.” Even in the dynamic, rapid-consumption environments of the social web, it is worth investing the time to design an incredible social media promotion.

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.

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.

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.