- Behind the Scenes
Competitions with our content team
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By Ben Sebborn
- 02 Jan 2018
- 4 min read
Image: Belladrum festival (source)
Looking to build hype around your event? One of the best ways could be by running a competition via our content team, either through our built-in website mechanic or via one of our social networks. Every competition we run receives an article featured on the Skiddle News section (which will describe and consequently advertise your event or product), which is then distributed across our various social networks to ensure maximum exposure. Here’s how they work across the different platforms.
Facebook and Twitter
Both of these social mediums have large followings, and for the right prize capture the imagination of our (and your) audience. Facebook like and comment competitions tend to reach five figure audiences very easily and we can promote these for you as well to maximise the exposure.
Prize wise, complete night out packages are the big wins here, so tickets, alcohol, travel and accommodation ensnare entrants quickly. In fact, staggering the prize across formats is always a good way to spike interest, so three or four different aspects is always better than just one big prize. In this respect, merchandise is always a good one to add as well, and if you’re representing a clothing company or an indirectly related events brand, we can usually combine the prizes across different people.
We will also increase prizes to more than one event to create bigger bundles, as we did recently with our promotion to new students (check our Manchester Freshers competition for evidence). These also work across platforms, allowing people to enter via the social network of their choice.
We also run Instagram contests – these are particularly good if you can offer something exclusive and pretty exciting when it comes to prizes. To get as many people as possible to enter, it needs to be something extra special, so think BIG. A really popular Instagram competition we ran was for Eric Prydz tickets, a hotel room plus drinks tokens.
We have also previously ran competitions that reward artistic people who take good photos, as we look to harness people taking pictures to prove they ‘deserve’ to win. The beauty of these competitions is that they create user-generated content within the entrant’s own feeds, amplifying the reach further. They enter by using captions with branded instagram handles and hashtags, which in turn powers awareness of your own Instagram account.
All our competitions do much better with support all round. Push them yourselves, get artists to do so, blag your mates into it; as these give stuff away customers get less annoyed at them being omnipresent. As well as wherever network the competition runs we always write a news article as well, and will usually push it on our other social networks and newsletter as well.
Useful links
To get in touch about a competition on Skiddle, contact Henry Lewis at henry@skiddle.com for all live music requests, club and dance music is Becca Frankland at becca@skiddle.com, and Amelia Ward is our Festivals Editor (available on amelia@skiddle.com).
