Organizing Facebook photo contests is a great tactic. Photo competitions on Facebook can help you boost your brand, increase engagement and even generate leads. But the key to success is in doing it right. You must follow certain rules and steps to ensure your promotion goes viral. So let’s take a look at how to run a successful Facebook photo contest.
Why organize Facebook photo contests?
Facebook is still one of the most powerful social media platforms, meaning that the majority of your audience is likely to be on this network. Therefore it’s obvious that you might want to engage your audience with a fun promotion. If you’ve already organized a Facebook giveaway and you know that your audience responds well to sweepstakes, then it might be time for a little bit more advanced promotion: a Facebook photo contest.
But let’s start with the basics… Why would you want to run a photo competition on Facebook? Well, here are a few possible reasons:
- Energize and engage your audience: online audiences respond to creative and fun content. Simple posts or product pictures don’t do the job anymore. Organizing a Facebook photo contest is a great chance to reconnect with your audience and re-engage some of your zombie followers!
- Collect user-generated content: photo contest = many photos. By participating in your photo competition, users accept terms and conditions. In other words, they give you permission to reshare their content for promotional purposes. And let us let you… User-generated content is the most authentic content on social media!
- Convert Facebook fans into leads: to accept those terms and conditions that we just mentioned (and get a chance to win something nice), participants must leave their contact details. Which is another perk for you and your database!
- Boost brand visibility: well-organized contests tend to go viral, as participants share the promotion with their family and friends. It’s a fantastic opportunity to boost your online presence.
Organize your Facebook Photo Contest with Easypromos
Now that we know why, let’s take a look at how to organize successful photo contests on Facebook.
The Easypromos Photo Contest application is the only tool that you need to organize your competition. It’s really easy to set up, run and finalize, which means that you don’t have to spend endless hours trying to figure out how to execute your contest.
To speed up the designing process of your Facebook photo contest, you can use one of our pre-configured photo contest templates after trying one of our interactive DEMOs. We have a variety of ready-made designs!
The Easypromos Facebook Photo Contest tool allows you to create a promotion in minutes, especially if you opt for one of our templates. All you have to do is upload your logo, edit the text, explain entry requirements and introduce the prize, which is the best motivation to participate in online contests. Then you just hit the “Activate” button and your Facebook photo contest is ready to go!
Now that your contest is active it’s time to share it with your Facebook fans as a new post! You can also invite your audience to vote for their favorite entries in the public gallery.
How to promote your Facebook photo contest
Just as we mentioned before, the registration form enabled in the Photo Contest app means that you can convert Facebook fans into leads for your brand. That’s why it’s important your Facebook contest reaches as many people as possible!
Disseminate your contest with organic Facebook posts
The first – and most obvious – step is to create a variety of organic Facebook posts.
Facebook photo contests created with the Easypromos app are displayed on a separate microsite – it means that to access it, users must follow a link. Share it in a few different posts to make sure your audience members see it. Take a look at how a small photography studio promoted their Facebook photo contest.
Run ads for your photo competition on Facebook
Another way to ensure that your target audience sees the contest is by running Facebook Ads.
Cross-promote your Facebook photo contests – on other networks, newsletters and website
Just because your contest is organized on Facebook, it doesn’t mean that your newsletter subscribers, website visitors, or even followers from other networks shouldn’t get a chance to participate.
All you have to do is make sure that you spread the word wherever you can, even in-store! Apart from attracting more participants, you will also get a chance to grow your Facebook audience.
Discover how a small photography studio organized a pet-themed Facebook photo contest. Apart from collecting great UGC, they also boosted their brand and expanded their mailing list.
Choosing the winner of your photo contest on Facebook
The most exciting part of running any kind of contest or promotion is choosing the winner. It’s what the participants are waiting for! And when it comes to Facebook photo contests you have quite a few options to choose from:
- Voting – the best option if you’re looking to boost engagement even further. Invite your online audience to vote for their favorite entries. What do you get out of it? You boost brand visibility as participants share their pictures in order to obtain more votes. And you also get more leads! Participants vote by leaving their contact details so your database is benefiting from it too! You can then even run a giveaway for all users that took part in the voting process.
- Jury decision – do you have a panel of judges? Show all the entries to your jury and let them choose their favorite entry!
- Random giveaway – if you want to generate excitement and boost loyalty, running a random giveaway is a perfect choice. All participants have a chance to win, no matter how many votes they obtained.
- Giveaway among the most voted – this one is for those that like to mix things up! Invite your audience to vote for their favorite entries and they run a random giveaway among the participants that obtained the most votes. You can also ask the jury to choose their favorite entries from the most voted ones.
- Prizes for all participants – looking to boost sales? Why don’t you email discount coupons to all registered users? It will not only help you increase profits but also reinforce customer relationships.
Facebook photo contest: participating by commenting on a Facebook post
Are you looking for a way to run a dynamic photo contest on Facebook that takes two minutes to set up? All you have to do is prepare text inviting users to participate in your Facebook photo contest and encourage them to participate by sharing their pictures in the comments. You don’t have to customize a photo contest app or ask people for votes. All it takes to finalize such a Facebook photo contest is our Facebook giveaway tool that will randomly choose a winner. This option is better for re-engaging audiences rather than collecting high-quality UGC.
Take a look at this fun example from Gardening Goddesses. The brand invited their followers to show pictures of their gardens in bloom. Random winners received store credit, as well as goodie bags.
Are you ready to run a Facebook photo contest for your audience? Remember, keep it simple and keep your followers in mind at all times! And don’t worry if you have questions or doubts; our experienced Customer Support Team is always ready to help and assist!
