An interesting way to get people to visit your social media page, and return often, is to host contests. Now, these do not have to be extravagant tournaments or even have magnificent prizes. It just has to be enough to engage your followers and to participate in the community you’re trying to tap into. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are great platforms for this type of outreach, but LinkedIn, and GooglePlus have the potential to engage the audience in such a way as well. The best part of a contest is that you’ll have pretty much all positive feedback (unless they find out you rigged it) with little cost to your company, as long as you promote an enticing, but fairly inexpensive prize.

There’s tons of different ways to work the “Like/Share/Retweet” systems to turn it into a contest. One of the biggest question is how will your followers be eligible for the prize.

Here’s some common and simple ideas:

Have the followers like or retweet the post to be entered into the contest. This way is best if you want a random winner.

If your contest has a theme, have them comment with a related story for them to be eligible for the prize. You can choose your favorite to be the winner, in this case.

Upload a certain picture, video, or item to be considered for the prize.

Share the contest with three friends to be eligible. This one may be more time consuming for the customer, so its good to be sure the prize is worth it on this one.

As far as prizes go, you can chose one of your new products, a gift card to your company, or something related to your field. For instance, if you’re a garden shop, you can have a gift basket full of garden supplies.

You also want to make sure the contest sounds legitimate. You’re going to throw a pebble of truth into a sea of scams, so make sure it seems real and not too good to be true.

The contest method is an interactive way to really bring attention to your page, and with the promise of more contests to come, it could have people checking for more opportunities to win, as well as making so your posts come before all others so they’re ready for their next chance.

Do you have any contest ideas you’d like to share? Comment below!