Neiman Marcus launched a sweepstakes to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Christian Louboutin shoes, leveraging the viral, visual combo of Twitter and Instagram to create a first-of-its-kind viral promotion  that is a case study in using fan-favorite social platforms to engage an audience. The Votigo-powered cross-platform promotion collects user-generated photos through March 10 and displays them on the Neiman Marcus blog and Facebook page.

3 important takeaways if you plan to run a visually-charged Twitter sweepstakes:

Know your audience. Make sure your followers have a passion for photography (often using their mobile camera)  and a willingness to share their art via Twitter.  Instagram has a natural alignment with consumer brands - from retailers to luxury goods to labels. (Wrote@nickwestergaard in January, “Fashion and beauty brands with obvious visual appeal have planted flags here as well, such as Burberry and Aveda.”)


Accommodate all users. While Instagram carries a certain prestige among photo sharing apps among iPhone-carrying Twitter users, others- especially Yfrog, TwitPic and Twitter’s own pic.Twitter- also each capture a huge share of  Twitter photo posts. So a photo-driven Twitter sweeps must accommodate each of these- as Neiman Marcus’ does.

A Unique Call To Action. In order capture and qualify the virally-driven flood of entries that a well-designed promotion (with a perfectly fitting prize) should deliver, make sure to require unique attributes in the original tweet. The Neiman Marcus sweeps requires the entrant to use both brands’ Twitter handles (@NeimanMarcus and @LouboutinWorld) as well as the unique hashtag #NMLoubiLove - which also makes it easy to check out all the action on Twitter.

Contact the Votigo team to find out more about running a photo-driven Twitter sweepstakes.

For additional reading check out  AllFacebook and Luxury Daily

We are constantly advocating that marketers should be platform agnostic and run their branded marketing and promotions across any channel where they may find their audience. Facebook continues to be a great centerpiece for any campaign, but there is great value in extending (or in some cases, dedicating) a campaign to other platforms- from standalone microsites to Twitter and Google+ to, of course, mobile.

We have had lots of fun working with our clients over the past few years on innovative campaigns that use mobile to tap into audiences on the go. The Champs Sports: We Know Game Scratch and Win is an example of a premium solution that lives on Facebook but has a dedicated mobile landing page (ChampsScratchandWin) and is generating a lot of buzz.

For Votigo Platform users, you may have also noticed that, not long after launching our first set of contest and promotions apps for Facebook, we followed up immediately with microsite and mobile publishing features. For no additional cost, marketers can publish their Facebook contest or Sweepstakes to a dedicated microsite AND to a dedicated mobile site, where their audience can enter.

So while we prepare some additional resources for this incredibly important new feature, here are 3 quick tips on how to make the most of it:

1) Publish it! Once you are finished designing your Contest or Sweeps, click “Publish.” Publish it to Facebook if you want. But then click “Publish” for Mobile (and for Microsite, too.) You can also snag the URL for each, to be used for spreading the word.

2) Cross post it. You are probably already using multiple channels to tell your audience about the promotion (if not, check out this post). Don’t be shy about sending a Tweet or adding a Facebook post geared straight toward mobile viewers- especially if you know that your audience is highly mobile. For example, if you Tweet once about the contest, tweet again soon after something like, “Mobile audience: you, too, can enter our contest straight from your mobile phone by clicking here.”

3) Email it. Whether in a dedicated email blast- with a subject line the specifically mentions the chance to enter a competition from a mobile and win- or just in your standard email marketing to your customer audience, call out the mobile contest or sweeps entry.

4) Advertise it: Google AdWords and other advertising networks offer incredible flexibility in targeting pay-per-click ad campaigns to mobile users. Take advantage of that and set up a mobile-only campaign with a clear call-to-action (Enter our contest from your mobile!) that directs to the mobile page.

5) Set up a custom URL and redirect: Depending on which ways you’ll promote your campaign, you can set up a dedicated web address for the mobile promotion (see Champs example above) and redirect it to the mobile URL provided in the platform. You could even use a URL shortener that allows you to set up custom URLs and simply redirects while offering additional metrics.

So don’t just publish a promotion to Facebook.  Take it mobile and make sure your mobile audience knows about it.

We’re often asked for “the key” to success in social media marketing and promotions. It’s a complex answer and there isn’t a single key but a series of essential steps, from building the foundation of an active audience across social platforms, through aligning an incentive that fits your brand and the promotion. We have written and tweeted and spoken about all of the above and we mean it when we say: don’t skip a step (and we’re happy to help).

But there is one element of a great promotion that is easy enough to overlook, to disastrous consequences.

You have to tell people about it.

To kickstart the viral effect, to draw the critical early adopters, to cultivate the Godinian Sneezers (or the Gladwellian Mavens) who influence their networks to pay attention, you have to promote the promotion.

Fortunately there are plenty of tools to spread the word. You can tell your existing social media audience by:

1) Post messages and updates about it on your Facebook page (and make sure to “Like” it yourself)
2) Tweet about it
3) Post about it on your company’s LinkedIn profile page, and on the status updates of your individual employees
4) Post about on Google+ (and make sure to “+1″ it from your own account)
5) Create a video about it and post it on YouTube
6) Write a blog post about it on your corporate blog
7) Announce it in your email marketing messages, newsletters and even the footer of day-to-day emails
8 ) Tell your clients about it directly
9) Post signage about it in stores
10) Broadcast a consistent message about it in your traditional media (radio, TV, print) advertising
11) Point PPC ads from AdWords to the promotion home page
12) Set up a display advertising campaign on Facebook and AdWords
13) Contact industry associations to message their members about it
14) Tell influential bloggers and Twitterers about it
15) Put out a press release about it

Check out how GORE-TEX updates its Facebook audience on the “YOUR-STORY - OUR GEAR” contest currently running on its Facebook page.

It’s a simple blend of old and new tactics for spreading the word, but you might be surprised by how many brands fail to lay the groundwork of their promotion from the beginning.

Also, a few quick nuts and bolts. Any time you promote your promotion, you should:

1) Include a link directly to the website, mobile landing page, YouTube channel or Facebook tab where the contest or sweepstakes is live
2) Use simple calls-to-action, such as “Tell your friends about our contest…”
3) Be responsive to users who reply, comment or re-post your messages

While you can’t always expect a glut of entries at the beginning of a campaign, if you tap into the cross-channel reach of all of the social and traditional media channels above, you can expect the viral effect to kick in and generate awareness and participation. You’ll increase your “Likes” and expand your overall social media audience, collect a great opt-in mailing list of potential customers, and (for UGC contests) inspire great content that you can use for future branding.

What strategies have been most effective for you in promoting your own branded promotions?

When it comes to creating a winning social media promotion it’s all in the details, and no detail is too small. One seemingly small detail that can have a huge impact on the success of your campaign is the use of a custom graphic. When you create your own campaign with our new self-serve tool, you have the option of uploading a custom graphic into your header. You’ll want to take advantage of this feature, as it can help generate more entries and ultimately more fans for your Facebook page.

So, what makes a great graphic? The best graphics include your campaign details in a clean and straightforward design. This allows fans to get a general idea of what’s required to enter your promotion and what they have a chance to win, quickly and without having to read rules and details.
Here are a few ideas for creating a winning graphic:

1. List the steps required to enter your promotion so that people can see how easy it is to win
2. List the prizes at stake to get your fans excited
3. Take advantage of the space. You can upload large graphics with a maximum width of 520 pixels and a maximum height of 900 pixels

Create a great graphic and you’re well on your way to a successful promotion that grows your audience and engages your fans. Need more ideas for creating a winning promotion? Here are 5 tips for making your contest a success.

You’ve made the commitment to launch a photo contest or video contest to engage your customer audience on social channels. It’s a great idea since it clearly addresses the question: what do I do with my Facebook and social media following?

But all user generated content contests are not cut from the same cloth. Some work tremendously- relative to the goals of the sponsor. And some probably flop- though we’re unfamiliar with that variety.

There are a lot of factors involved. But while we’ve recently shared our thoughts on Why Social Media Contests Work and, earlier, simply How To Do Social Media, we’ll continue on the theme and get closer to our sweet spot. Today’s lesson, polled from our full-service client team: 3 Features that Push a Social Media Contest to Success.

1) Geotargeting: Localize the User Experience

Big brands are gravitating toward a localized content experience on Facebook, mobile and beyond, writes Lauren Fisher at SimplyZesty.

Or as Dave Williams, Bling Media CEO, wrote recently on Ad Age:

“Localized creative is effective at generating awareness and ultimately driving people into stores, building higher order value, and powering transactions. Think of it like the Sunday circular that runs in the newspaper every week. Instead of buying ads in the paper, brands can push weekly specials out to localized audiences, and do so far more efficiently with mass reach and frequency.”

The social media promotion feature that solves this: Geotargeting. Say you’re a retailer, restaurant or service provider and you want to talk to customers based on proximity to your retail locations. Either through Profile information (on Facebook) or by asking for a zip code, geotargeting allows you to promote events (store openings), offer coupons or even customize contest parameters and prizes at the local level.”

2) Voter Incentive: Removing Barriers to Participate

Everyone creates content on the internet right? Actually not: as Forrester Research reported last autumn (via ReadWriteWeb’s Sarah Perez), fewer than a quarter of the internet audience are Creators of social content.

It’s true that in nearly a year since the Forrester study was released, new forums for publishing social content abound. Not just Google+, Quora, Tumblr and the other surging social networks, but also apps like Instagr.am and services like Spotify are empowering users with even more opportunity to publish content (like stylized photos and personal playlists) to the social web.

Still, content creation is a barrier for some would-be participants of a photo or video contest. So on the one hand, a significant chunk of your brand’s audience are Creators. They are in the habit of creating content for the web, and they have more tools than ever to do so. That user generated content will lead to authentic engagement, viral brand storytelling among your customers, and a repository of content (video, images, words) to be repurposed for future use (with permission). Many contest sponsors would be thrilled with that result.

But on the other, you can generate far greater participation in the contest if you also remove the Creator barrier from participation.

A Voter Incentive does just that. This feature layers a sweepstakes, in which anyone who votes, or comments, or shares a submission, is eligible to win a prize, on top of the contest. Rewarded for participating, voters who haven’t submitted content still have incentive to check back daily or weekly, see the latest entries, cast a vote, spread the word again, and most importantly for you, reconnect with the brand.

Check out ABSA’s My Team, My Passion photo and video contest, which promotes the Currie Cup- South Africa’s premier rugby competition- and is sponsored by one of the nation’s largest banks. ABSA’s contest is perfect example of a well-staged user generated content contest- especially because the winning video will air during the Currie Cup Final, but also because the Voter Incentive awards weekly prizes to voters.

3) The Viral Incentive: A Round Trip to Spreading the Word

This refer-a-friend feature is critical for creating the word-of-mouth effect that is typically a goal for any social media contest. In essence, the contest participant gains additional entries to a sweepstakes each time someone they invite registers, votes or otherwise participates in the contest. It is a simple and powerful form of referral marketing and it virtually ensures word-of-mouth will happen.

You’re investing in a social media promotion- a great step to engaging and expanding your pool of potential customers and advocates across digital channels. Don’t forget about the details- those premium features that broaden participation, personalize the experience and trigger word-of-mouth.

Last week we offered up 4 reasons why Social Media Contests work in summer, in the marketing blitzes leading up to the school year and the holidays, or any time of year. Today we continue with 4 more reasons you should consider Contests and Sweepstakes as part of your social media strategy on Facebook and beyond.

5) Contests Work for a B2B audience, Too

93% of B2B marketers already use some combination of social media for marketing, according to SocialMediaB2b (via B2B magazine’s study).  Using social media for B2B marketing isn’t so different than for consumer brands, wrote Inc.’s JJ McCorvey: define your target audience and go to the channels they use with consistent, resourceful content.

A well-targeted contest geared toward business participants can certainly be part of your B2B social media strategy. Much more on this topic to come, but check out  the city of Yonkers, New York’s efforts to attract start-ups and “smart” businesses through its Y-Your Enterprise video contest. Small, growing businesses are entering to win office space at the Y-Enterprise Business Center; finalists videos will soon be posted. The contest also attracted press from Mashable’s Jennifer Van Grove when it launched in May.

6) Contests Integrate Well with Digital Ad Campaigns

Any social media promotion can- and should- be supported with an ad campaign that drives users and attention to it.  Speedway isn’t relying on word-of-mouth alone to drive (highly entertaining) submissions to its Fountain Palooza video contest. It’s also supporting the promotion with a digital display ad campaign that drives awareness and clicks from other entertaining websites to the contest home page.  Retailers with physical storefronts can  also represent the promotion with an in-store display, and add Twitter, Facebook and YouTube components, to attain cross-media awareness. And vice versa: a contest can support a broader ad campaign, and the video and photo submissions can (with permission) be repurposed into future ad content.

7) Contests Bring Your Brand’s Subject Matter to Life

Let’s say you’re an established business introducing a complex new technology, or simply launching a new product into an established market.  How do you hold the audiences’ attention long enough to convey the benefits of your latest innovation?  A contest is an effective way to tell the story of something new and breathe viral life into any discussion.

Waste Management, the long-reigning king of waste removal and recycling, launched a new product- the Bagster- to fill a void in the home waste removal market.  How does WM get consumers to think about this alternative, which fills a void between the curbside garbage can and the dumpster?  By asking customers to demonstrate the impact the new product could make in the Bagster Home Waste Loss Plan photo contest, which taps users for Before and After photos of home renovation projections where the large-capacity container could’ve come in handy.  It’s a clever spin on asking customers to show how they would use a new product.

8 )  Contests Build Through Stages To a Remarkable Conclusion

Finally, a great contest tells a story not as a one-time exposure (like seeing the same ad over and over), but through multiple stages of  activity.  Brands sponsoring a contest can engage the audience at several touchpoints- from announcing the imminent launch of the contest to collecting and showcasing submissions to announcing semi-finalists to hosting a finalist stage or grand prize event.   It’s easy to incorporate a lot of event milestones and multimedia elements to keep the audience engaged and checking back often.

Bank of the West’s recently-concluded Rockin’ O!maha Band Contest first collected videos of emerging groups performing original songs, and built to the crescendo of a free outdoor concert and fireworks show that took place over Independence Day Weekend in Omaha.  The contest winners- Take Me To Vegas- won the honor of opening the show for .38 Special and Cheap Trick in front of an estimated 62,000 fans. That’s an incredible build-up to a very memorable event.

There you have it- 8 solid reasons why social media contests can help you break your brand through the historically slow summer months and continue to build a following on Facebook and other social media platforms.  Please contact Votigo if you have questions or want to start planning something special. Enjoy the rest of your summer!

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.

With Internet Week New York (#IWNY) off to a stellar, if scorching, start in Manhattan, Votigo has been soaking up the social media-packed agenda - a diverse range of digital topics ranging from mobile and video to how comedians like Michael Ian Black (among others) build an audience and advance their art form in social media.

Tomorrow we get hands-on at two Thursday events:

Check out Votigo president and co-founder Jim Risner as he joins Likeable Media CEO Dave Kerpen and other social media marketing technology leaders on a panel at LikeableU. The panel drops Thursday at 10am at the brand new Yotel at 570 10th Avenue. Registration is here and the event is in conjunction with the launch of Kerpen’s soon-to-be-bestseller, likeable social media.

Meanwhile Votigo will be at OMMA Social the entire day- from the early hours through the keynote by Bryan Perez, Senior VP/General Manager, NBA Digital, to the final panel - included two much-needed coffee breaks we’re hosting. Votigo VP of Business Development Mark Hodson and others will be on hand; we hope to see you there.



Drop us a note here or here (twitter.com/votigo) if you’re going to be at either event.  We’ll see you there and we’ll save an (iced?) coffee for you.

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.

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.