Small business retail management advice: how to run a Facebook competition

Our small business POS software company helps retailers in many different ways every day. Often, advice is sought on business management needs outside of POS software needs. In one case recently we were asked to provide advice on running Facebook competitions. Here is the advice we provided:

Running a competition on your business Facebook page is a terrific way to drive engagement and attract likes (followers).

Here is our advice on how to do this based on running many competitions on our various pages.

1. Here is an example of competition text we would use in a store: Win this adorable Herbie Willow Bear. Share and comment on this post to enter. Like our Facebook page for more Willow news. Comp. ends Sept. 21 @ 5pm. Winner drawn at random and announced here. Prize to be collected from the shop.
2. Run competitions for a short time of between a day and five days. Any longer and it gets lost.
3. Be clear in your call to action.
4. Be clear with any rules.
5. Include either one photo or four with one being rectangular and three being square.
6. Boost the post for the first day or two days but not for the whole time. Select the audience based on the product you are promoting.
7. Watch entries and comment where appropriate.
8. Choose the winner by getting all the entries on the screen and scroll up and down and where it ends is your winner. The choice must be random.
9. Announce the winner on the post as a comment.
10. Message the winner. If they don’t respond in a day, message them again and say they have x days to collect.
11. If they do not collect in, say, seven days, redraw.

Here the most important advice: every competition must have a commercial imperative, a goal for the business in terms of likes, store visits, purchases. Know your goal and measure your achievement once the competition is over.

Competitions are an excellent way to drive engagement on Facebook for any business. Get it right though – otherwise you could do more damage to your brand than you would like. The old adage of measure twice and cut once works here when setting up competitions.