Social media contests have become a popular tactic among marketers aiming to boost their online presence. On the surface, they appear to offer a straightforward way to increase followers, engagement, reach, and even email subscribers. But are they truly worthwhile? Let’s examine the benefits and drawbacks of running social media contests to help you decide if investing your time and resources is the right move for your brand.
The Benefits of Running Social Media Contests
1. Increased Reach and Engagement
One of the biggest advantages of social media contests is their potential to amplify reach and engagement. As participants comment, like, and share your contest posts, your content gains visibility beyond your existing audience. This surge in activity can drive brand awareness and introduce your business to new potential customers. To maximize benefits, ensure your brand identity is clearly displayed across all contest materials — photos, videos, and written content — so that new audiences remember your brand after the contest ends.
2. Growth in Followers
Contests can be highly effective for growing your social media following. Particularly when combined with partnerships or collaborations with other businesses and influencers (or “creators”), and supported by targeted social media advertising, contests can attract followers who have an interest in what you offer.
3. Building an Email List
Beyond immediate social media impact, contests provide a unique opportunity to grow your email list—a critical asset for long-term marketing success. While it’s true that contests requiring email sign-ups often yield fewer entries (since people hesitate to share their email), those who do subscribe become valuable contacts you can reach directly, bypassing fluctuating social media algorithms.
4. Generating User-Generated Content (UGC)
Contests that encourage participants to produce and share their own photos, videos, or reviews tap into the power of user-generated content. UGC significantly influences buying decisions and builds trust, often more than branded advertising. The challenge is that such contests usually require a larger or more highly engaged audience to yield substantial participation.
The Drawbacks of Social Media Contests
1. Navigating Platform Rules Is Tricky
Social media networks have strict guidelines for contests. For example, Facebook and Instagram prohibit contests that require users to “like and share” posts or “tag friends” as a condition of entry. Although many contests break these rules without immediate penalty, doing so risks serious consequences—such as diminished reach, account suspension, or even deletion. It’s vital to understand and comply with platform policies to protect your brand’s online presence.
2. The Risk of Contest Flop
Not all contests succeed. Poor planning, insufficient promotion, or lack of amplification can lead to underwhelming participation and minimal results. A well-thought-out strategy greatly reduces this risk.
3. Attracting Irrelevant or Fake Followers
Contests often attract audiences who are primarily interested in winning prizes rather than engaging with your brand long-term. Worse, there are communities online dedicated to entering as many contests as possible, sometimes using fake accounts to maximize entries. These followers don’t contribute to meaningful business growth and can dilute your engagement metrics.
4. Time and Cost Investment
Despite the perception that running a contest is “free,” it requires substantial time and effort in planning, creating, and promoting the competition. Moreover, to truly maximize results, many brands allocate budget toward advertising and collaboration with influencers—factors that increase the cost.
Making Social Media Contests Work: An Eight-Step Process
If, after weighing the pros and cons, you decide to run a contest, following a structured process can help you achieve better results. Here’s a brief overview of the key first step, with the remaining steps based on best practices not detailed here:
1. Set Clear and Specific Goals
Before launching a contest, define what success looks like. Are you aiming to gain a certain number of new followers? Increase engagement rate by a percentage? Grow email subscribers? Generate user-created content? Setting measurable targets allows you to track progress and evaluate the effectiveness of your efforts.
Subsequent steps typically cover designing the entry mechanism, creating appealing prizes, promoting the contest strategically, ensuring compliance with platform rules, engaging with participants, tracking results, and following up effectively.
Are Social Media Contests Worth Your Time?
Social media contests can be powerful marketing tools when executed thoughtfully. They offer tangible benefits around visibility, audience growth, and content creation. However, they require careful planning, adherence to platform rules, and a realistic appetite for investing time and resources.
If your goal is to build authentic, engaged communities and lasting customer relationships, social media contests should be part of a broader, well-integrated marketing strategy—not a quick fix. By understanding both their strengths and limitations, you can decide whether a contest is the right approach for your brand’s unique needs.
By balancing these considerations, you can make a more informed choice about incorporating contests into your social media marketing toolkit.
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