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Part 5 ? Picture contestsWe love posting pictures on our social media. And if you don?t, be aware that your customers probably do. 350 mil l ion photos are shared on Facebook every day, more than 70 mil l ion daily posts on Instagram, yes we do love posting pictures and sharing our experience on our favourite social platforms (Smith, 2015). Photos and videos are far more engaging than textual updates. Our eyes are directly caught up by the most random photos whereas the most original and best written articles often go unnoticed. Hence, one of the best ways to engage your customers is to create a picture contest in which you give them the opportunity to do what they do so well, posting pictures, while talking about you around their world.

The advantages of picture contests The main advantage of picture contests is that they increase the interaction between you and your customer base. They are not just about taking and posting pictures, they are the f irst proof of the engagement of your customers towards your brand. If your customers didn?t l ike your brand and didn?t want to engage with you, they couldn?t be bothered to participate to your contest and share it on their social media. Following my tips of the past 4 weeks, you have a crowd of almost engaged customers; picture contests help you to engage them fully. ?Interaction creates a link between yourself and the potential customers. If

you show an interest in them, it is more likely they will return the favour? (Slice Communications, 2015). This is what Nutella was looking for when they came to us. So we did what we do best, we engaged their customers who have spread the word about the brand. People have shared amazing pictures of them using Nutella in original ways, passing that to the company and interacting with it.

Engage - Amplify - convert

How to engage your customers in 7 steps

Pictawall

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Picture contests also help give you the opportunity to access original user-generated content or UGC, which is more convincing than brand-generated content. Let?s think it that way: when you are to buy a product, you often have a multitude of brands you can choose from. They always try to convince you of how

amazing their products are, each being better than the others. How confusing this is, what you are left with is a bunch of products that you cannot really dif ferentiate from each other. On the other hand, if you see actual people like you and me that have approved the product, you feel more confident buying that product.

How to run your picture contestHave wel l -def ined goals:

Having a contest is amazing, but how amazing is it if you can?t measure its effect afterwards? So before launching a picture contest, always ask yourself what do you want out of this contest? Are you aiming at more sales of a specif ic product or more likes on your Facebook page? Once you have identif ied your objectives, you can determine a metrics that you?ll use as reference of the success of your contest. Having goals for your contest allows you to follow a specif ic metric and take corrective actions if necessary.

Keep it simple and clear:

Don?t forget it is just a picture contest and nothing else. So please, keep it clear and easy. Your contest will be integrated among a bunch of updates, advertising and basically anything else you can f ind on social platforms or the website(s) you decide to spread it on. It is thus likely that participating to your contest wasn?t their plan before seeing it. They have other things to do than trying to understand what they have to do and what they can win through your contest. So if you want them to take some of their t ime to send you their photos, make sure that they can understand your contest easily. Explain how they can participate and what they have to do to win will help you increase the number of participants and thus the reach of your contest.

http:/ / iconosquare.com/contests/myaway

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Genuinely nice prizes:

I bet you wouldn?t imagine taking part to a contest if you didn?t even want to win the prize offered to the winner. So if you intend to engage your customers through a picture contest, make sure that you know your customers well enough to offer them prizes that will appeal to them. You can decide to offer products that could potentially please anyone, giving away a smartphone or a new tablet. However, you can also try to offer prizes that are more specif ic to your business. For example, the ?Share the experience photo contest? of the US National Park Foundation offers sportswear backpack and passes for the recreational lands interagency areas. All prizes likely to suit the winners, fans of nature and its beauty.

Add cal l to act ions:

Your contest will have better chances to spread if you incentivize the contestants to share it. Always add call to actions to remind participants to share your contest on their own social platforms.

See you next week Photo contest are not new. However, there now more and more tools that you can use to leverage the best out of them. In addition to picture contests, one of our special engagement tools at Pictawall is the Tweet Battle. Come back next week to discover how the Tweet Battle can help you engage with your audience.

http:/ /www.nationalparks.org/ connect/2013-share-experience-photo-contest

http:/ /www.nationalparks.org/ connect/2013-share-experience-photo-contest