One of my previous clients was asked to be a sponsor for this year’s “Anything Goes Tailgate” for the Georgia/Florida college football game. This year’s event featured a full performance the night before the game from a new country duo, Florida Georgia Line. My client received three pairs of tickets, among other offers, for being a sponsor, so we created a Facebook campaign to hold a contest for the ticket giveaway.

For one month, each week we gave out one pair of tickets until a week before the event. We created custom artwork for the post images, in addition to some of the official artwork from the event and brand. The contest rules were quite simple: “Like” the post and “Tag” whoever you would bring with you to the show! After many attempts at Facebook contests, some focusing on page likes, others on sharing posts, we found that instructing follower’s to “Tag” someone to enter was most effective. It 1) required action on the follower’s part other than just liking the post and 2) increased our reach through everyone that was being tagged in the contest. Whoever was tagged was more inclined to see the post, and in turn, enter themselves and someone else into the contest. Our engagement for this campaign was incredible, and we had over 200 submissions throughout the whole contest.

There are other circumstances in which I’ve experienced different requirements work. For example, when using Instagram for a contest, I’ve found out first-hand that when you ask followers to “Share” an image and use a particular hashtag, you can track everyone who uses that hashtag and check their profile to see if they shared your image. The only issue is you have to add a disclaimer asking that everyone’s profiles be “public” and/or that the contest host is “following” your page to win. Overall though, I feel that contests and campaigns using hashtags and tags on social media are a sure way to increase your following and engagement on these various platforms – and they’re fun!