However, as we commonly see on Social Media platforms, even the best contests need to be set free.  Holding a contest for fans of Facebook eliminates the avid YouTube browser. This is where it becomes hugely important to Know Your Audience before asking them to participate.

5 Questions Before Asking a Brand’s Audience to Participate in a Social Media Contest

1. Can the contest/ campaign be fluent on all social media platforms?
2. On which social media platform does the average consumer most often spend their time?
3. What is in it for the consumer?
4. Will the consumer want to promote their participation on their social media profiles?
5. What is the longevity of the campaign?

If all of these questions can easily be answered, it could be possible to allow a fan base of over 1 million people to choose a brand’s new product.

5 Benefits of Consumer Participation

1. Consumer approval
2. High ROI potential
3. Increased awareness potential
4. Brand Appreciation
5. Increased Fans across Social Media profiles

Vitamin Water flexed their Social Media muscle by knowing exactly what their fan base wanted.   The majority of the campaign existed on Facebook, while promotional videos existed on YouTube with celebrity appearances by Steve Nash and 50 Cent.  However, voting for the new flavor took place across multiple levels of Social Media platforms.  Every tweet, image, blog post, etc. on Twitter, Google Blog Search, FoodGawker, and Flickr were weighted as a form of voting for the winning flavor.

As a result, Vitamin Water was able to achieve popularity and recognition on huge news sites declaring them as the brand taking chances.  Whether or not Social Media masses agree with the flavor choice is another question.

Contests, especially user-generated ones, have the ability to drive significant traffic and links to a site. For example, there are many sites like Contest Hound and Contest Blogger, that share information about various available contests. Many participants connect with contest for the following reasons:

• Win a prize (monetary or material)
  
• Recognition
• Connect with the brand
  

In order for people to connect with a contest, the concept needs to be relevant to the target audience’s interests. Issue-based organizations have been extremely successful at drawing many participants and encouraging feedback, regardless of the prize. However, consumer goods struggle with contests, especially if the rewards are nominal.

Wells Fargo, the financial services company, is offering a contest that encourages users to submit a story of what they would accomplish if they had a certain amount of money. Some Day Stories is rewarding the winner with $100,000.

This contest has the potential to increase brand awareness, directly connect Wells Fargo with their consumers and dramatically spike site traffic. When people need a banking service, they will likely to go back to the site.

Between June 9 and August 25, a featured story will win the Story of the Week prize of $1,000. So start writing Today and make it yours!

The H.J. Heinz Co. had a pretty successful User-Generated Contest (UCG) last year. The Top This TV Challenge invited America to create the next Heinz ketchup commercial. The winner won $57,000. I never saw the commercial on TV, but maybe the limited its release? Heinz said it received more than 4,000 qualified entries. They currently have another contest, Take 2.

Although UGC can dramatically impact the success of a contest, participants do not always take it very seriously. Heinz received many weird and disgusting videos for how to use the product. For example, Ketchup used shampoo. Yikes! This is why one good rule in UGC is to always have someone in the company monitor the submission and make the final decisions. Imagine if all the voters chose the shampoo video? That could be disastrous to the company.

Imagine if this was the video they went with?

Heinz posted the winners’ videos which kept the conversation going long after the contest was over. This created a community, boosted engagement, and established brand loyalty. Additionally, it prompted a buzz around the brand online and sent significant referral traffic.

Do you have a bad boss? Not me Created by Working America, “My Bad Boss” contest encouraged people to submit stories about horrific experiences with their bosses.

We work against wrong-headed priorities favoring the rich and corporate special interests over America’s well-being.

They offered weekly prizes that related to the theme, like earplugs and a rear view mirror so you can see your boss sneaking up on you. It is an example of a creative idea and execution.

Effective contests are a great way to bring loyal customers and new people to your site. The variations in creating a contest are seemingly endless, but the end goal is the same- bring people back to the site and create awareness.

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5. Win one of these fancy shirts donated by Graywolf (not sure about this part)

If 1-4 sound appealing to you then quickly head on over Bruce Clay’s new SEO Contest: Help People, Get Training, Go to SMX and get involved.

Back in June, BetUS.com came up with a great idea – Put Your Money Where Your Blog Is in which people were able to place bets on who they thought would end the year at the top of Technorati’s Top 100 List. This was a brilliant peice of viral marketing that resulted in a lot of buzz and a lot of really good links. The beauty of this went beyond the links because it got a lot of new people to sign up and bet on something that they could relate to. It went beyond link bait for the sake of links.

When this contest started:

Technorati.com (a blog search engine) says that there are over 37.3 million blogs in the blog universe (or blogosphere as it’s collectively known as).

Currently they are tracking over 63.2 million blogs.

Here were the original odds:

A bet on Matt Cutts would have won you $600 on a $100 wager. Unfortunately for you (and Matt) – you would have lost (unless Matt gives away the secrets to Google’s algorithm between now and Sunday causing thousands of webmasters around the globe start linking to it) since he won’t even be in the Top 100 when 2007 arrives. So who is in the running? At this point it is basically between Engadget and BoingBoing (with engadget holding a very comfortable lead).

Here’s the current top 5:

So if you put a sizeable bet on BoingBoing now would be the time to start spamming blogs to get thousands of quick links counting your losses because it looks like Engadget has this one in the bag.

I will update this post once the winner is announced – BTW BetUS wouldn’t let me place a bet on this today – I even tried calling

Update : As expected – Engadget won handily…