Maximising return from running a competition

Trojan

I'd like to run a competition and I want to ensure that I get the best possible return from it, in terms of social media and SEO outreach. Here's a related post from SEOmoz that I found in my initial investigation.

Any tips and advice?

mneylon

It depends what you're giving away

We've had mixed experiences with competitions, but each time you run one you learn from your previous experiences / mistakes and lessons.

In terms of "social" - do you want more followers on Twitter / Facebook? Or just sharing?

SEO is a harder one, as you'd have to give people a reason to post about it without ending up with a load of rubbishy posts on blogs etc.,

Trojan

The competition would be particularly targeted to small SMEs and entrepreneurs (obviously we'll take all shares, RTs that we can get).

I was thinking of just having a single prize, winner takes all:

• 1 HP DM1Z Pavilion notebook (~€700 worth),
• 1 professional logo design,
• 1 business card design,
• 1 hour website consultancy session
• free access to our premium training videos

I already have the DM1Z but the rest is optional. If the HP is really unsuitable I'd consider selling it for cash and offering something sexier, like an iPhone 5 or an iPad, but I've got this and it might be more appropriate to the demographic. Could add in some simple extras like printing for the cards and a years domain and hosting, etc.

Ideally we'd increase followers on Twitter and Facebook, as well as increase inbound links through links to the competition page.

Any thoughts based on that info?

mneylon

If you want to increase SEO etc., then you want to target people who already have a website of some kind

You probably want to get the already online types to promote the service that you're promoting for you so I'm not really sure if they'd want a laptop (I know I wouldn't want it)

A "cool" gadget of some kind is usually more attractive and more easily "shared"

So it would make more sense to me to have a "sexier" prize and use it to push a freebie of some kind ..

Trojan

With all due respect to HP laptops, "cool and sexy" they ain't. Thanks for the feedback.
Any more input?