How to best run a competition on social media for your hospitality businesses.

Running a competition on social media is a great way to collaborate with brands, build your reach + increase your brand awareness.

Now, before you just dive straight in, there are a few things you should keep in mind;

Strategy - Know your goal.

Before you launch your competition, know what it is you want to achieve because let's be honest, giving away an experience worth a few hundred dollars in exchange for a couple of comments might not be worth it. Your goal could look a little something like; increase exposure of a brunch offer or to boost your Instagram engagement rates.

The Process: How to enter.

The key here is to "Keep It Simple". Do you really think your audience are going to want to like 10 other pages, comment and like a post just to enter? I think not. Remember the more entries - the better. Keep the steps to 1-2 max.

The Rules: Don't get caught out.

If you are running your competition on the Facebook family of apps make sure your competition abides by the Facebook Guidelines so that you don't get caught out - there are a few restrictions in place especially for Facebook competitions. Instagram though, isn't as regulated. Also, It's a good idea to steer clear from confusing your audience, tell them exactly what they need to do to enter, where they can enter and when the winner will be drawn. If a customer thinks that your competition is dodgy it can tarnish + loose trust in your brand.

The Prize: Make it worth while.

You need to make sure that the prize is just as valuable to your audience as the competition is to you. Don't give away a meal every night of the year but also don't be too cheap and offer one free drink as the prize. Some ideas include, tickets to an event your trying to promote, gift vouchers and or an in-venue experience like brunch for you + 3 friends.

The Investment: Invest in the competition.

Let's be honest one simple post about the competition might not be enough, invest in the competition (put a bit of money behind it), pop it up on your website, link it in your next EDM.

The Result: Make it public.

Finally, be sure to announce the winner publicly, comment and tag the winner in the original post, create a separate winner announcement post or announce via stories this just helps with your competition creditably - that you actually have a legit winner and are not dodgy.

One last tip for the road: be sure to use engaging language to create a sense of urgency and entice your audience to act before it's too late.

If you'd like some more help setting up and managing a winning Social Media competition for your hospitality store or venue, please don't hesitate to get in touch with me, I'd love to help.