Mother’s Day Contest Via Social Media

If you know me or read my blog often, you know that I LOVE most things related to Social Media. With that being said there are those times in my day where I come across something and wish that the company running the contest, promotion or just simply handling the Social Media had hired me and today is definitely one of those days. I rarely ever toot my own horn about my skills and knowledge in this arena, but I am about to give some FREE advice for what I would have done to prevent someone else from writing this blog post.

Yesterday I got an email from the crafter’s store, Michael’s about their “Creative Mom” contest and right away knew that my Mom had this contest. My Mom could spend days in that store and entire paychecks if she was able to which is what made this contest so awesome to me.

This is what you had to do:

1. Click the link that was in the email that takes you to the “Creative Moms” Facebook fanpage.

2. Well you click another link to be transferred to the nomination page.

3. Fill out all the information they require.

4. Submit

5. (I never got this far) Vote and have your family and friends vote.

Now that sounds a lot like most contests, correct? Here is the issue, everything about this contest seems to be taking place on Facebook. I can’t honestly tell if the voting is, but the nominating definitely is and my question is why would anyone use a site such as Facebook for any sort of contest that would bring in massive amounts of hits?

There are a few reasons why you should not be hosting a voting style contest on Facebook or like sites.

1. You have no control of Facebooks website and if a tech issue arises you are more than likely stuck waiting ……. and waiting ………… and probably waiting some more.

2. Why would you want to have a contest on Facebook if you have your own website? I know for sure that I would LOVE to have hundreds of hits an hour to my own site, wouldn’t you?

So you are probably wondering by now why I am writing this post, right? Yup, I knew it and no I’m not a mind reader. Anyways my reason for this post is that since yesterday I have been trying to nominate my Mom for this contest. The prize is a $1000 shopping spree at Michael’s and I know my Mom would be in heaven, plus I would be the favorite child if she won <evil laugh> I mean let’s be honest here, $1000 on pencils and other crafting supplies in this economy would be absolutely amazing for my Mom since her pencils are getting dull and it still costs a lot of money to buy supplies to do what she loves.

The entire problem with this contest is that since yesterday (when the page had less than 50 fans) there has been glitches. The glitches have been everything from the page not displaying on the fanpage to getting a blank page after you nominate your Mom and I have also read that the voting does not work for those that were lucky enough to get through the nomination page.

Just for fun (and I guess as a hint to Michael’s) I am going to tell you EXACTLY how I  would have run this contest:

1. When blasting out the email about it, I would have kept it the same if the point is to get fans on the Facebook page. My only question is how often will the “Creative Moms” fan page be used? Is it only a Mother’s Day thing? If it is only for Mother’s Day then why not take the opportunity to drive fans to the main Michael’s fan page and if it will be used throughout the year then I say keep it as it is now with the pages.

2. OK so we are on a fan page at this point looking to nominate our Mommy’s to win this contest so I would have on the FBML landing page instructions and rules for the contest with one being “Make sure you become a fan of _______’s page because that’s how/where we will be announcing the winner”.

*This is promoting the fan page and driving more people to “like” your page.

3. On that static FBML landing page within Facebook make the “nominate” link redirect to YOUR website where YOU have set up the actual contest so YOU can control technical issues and also take advantage of the massive amounts of traffic you will be getting.

4. So you have the nominate and voting all set up on your own URL and now it’s time to announce the winner which is where you turn back to the Facebook fan page to do so.

Not rocket science here and it give you more control over what is obviously your own contest.

I do hope that they fix the issue soon, because I do want to nominate my amazing Mom and the reasons are right here in pictures.

The image below is Dolce Debbie wearing her birthday present (necklace) made by my Mom

For more of my Mom’s artwork please visit her blog

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Kim Randall – Social Media Strategist

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Social Brand Strategist & Interwebs Addict, Blogger, Lame joke teller, St. Louis Cardinals fan (woot! woot! 2011 Champs!!), Twitterholic, Second Life Resident (Sadie Pippita), entrepreneur, CEO of KiMedia Strategies - Tampa Social Media, Startup Weekend Tampa co-organizer and Chihuahua owner.

Kim has 384 awesome posts.

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