Challenges being hurled out at social media sites has begun to pick up serious momentum. There is definitely value for your business to engage in them but you need to know exactly what you are doing and why or you just may end up hurting your brand. Issuing social media challenges can generate leads for you in the short term as well as present your company as one that truly engages and cares about its customers.
It must be relevant and it must be short
You know your audience? You know your target demographics? Your challenge needs to be directed at them and you need to solve a problem for them. Solving their problem means buying your product or service. Find out what they need and want and build the challenge totally around those. The challenge just can’t be for pure entertainment. Those who participate need to get a payoff in the end.
Keep the challenge to a week or ten days time frame. Any longer than that and interest in the challenge begins to fall dramatically. Create a true sense or urgency to participate and make the payoff, the solving of their problem, grow larger and more significant with each passing day.
Simple is always best and get them to share
Keeping the contest or challenge as simple as possible will be helpful. Try and keep their call to action to taking just one particular action. Don’t let them be following a treasure map looking for clues. Also, give them something they can share over their own social networks or business networks. Extend your brand whenever you can. Each step you have them take in solving the challenge must get them to where you want them to end up. Combine this with your online marketing and social media advertising and you should see results fairly quickly.
-Written by Kevin Sawyer
