Category: Social Media

3 Tips for a Big Football Sweepstakes Score

Football season is back! Time for tailgating and weekend fun watching the pee-wee, high school, college and professional games. You might think that it would be a great time to promote your business by giving away game tickets or running a football sweepstakes. And it is! People love winning free tickets or team merchandise, especially autographed items or trips to big games. However, there are three questions to ask

August 25, 2017 No Comments

Get Social with a Back to School Sweepstakes for Students

Social is the perfect platform for a back to school sweepstakes as it’s the easiest way to engage high school and college aged students. You don’t need a huge budget to run a social campaign, and as long as you run the promotion on a platform familiar to your target age group, and offer something they want they will find you! It’s a win-win for your brand and for

July 19, 2017 No Comments

Sizzling Summer Social Sweepstakes Ideas

Need a summer social sweepstakes idea? Here are 6 of them! Hashtag a Day Sweepstakes: Post a new hashtag every day in your social posts, and ask your customers to tweet or post an Instagram photo or Tumblr post using that hashtag of the day. This sweepstakes will encourage people to look for your social posts each day – and reward customers with random drawings for daily prizes. I

June 16, 2017 No Comments

Social Contests and Sweepstakes: Favorite (and Least Favorite) Platforms to Use

Social contests and sweepstakes are currently the most popular tactic that we are seeing our clients use to increase brand awareness and reach. The Marden-Kane team has some strong ideas on what social platforms work, and which ones can cause headaches. We compiled this list of pros and cons to use when evaluating social platforms for your brand’s next social promotion. Remember: If you are thinking of running social

April 4, 2017 No Comments

Make Your AMOE Count

AMOE stands for Alternate Means of Entry or Alternate Method of Entry. By law, a sweepstakes in the United States must have a free method of entry, so if a sweepstakes asks for a purchase to obtain an entry or a code for an entry, then the rules should always list a “no purchase” or AMOE method of entry. Whether you are running a sweepstakes or entering one, here is how to make

March 17, 2017 No Comments

20 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Contest Vendor

Before hiring a contest vendor you should ask lots of questions. Not all vendors are created equal. Some may be technically proficient but lack legal expertise. Some have the legal credentials but can’t build a web site or do registration and bonding. Here are twenty questions you should be asking before you select your contest vendor: How well do they know sweepstakes law and advertising and mobile? A top

March 10, 2017 No Comments

Pinterest Guidelines for a Successful Promotion

Pinterest guidelines for contests and sweepstakes were recently updated to allow brands more flexibility in running promotions. Gone are the mandates around forbidding using likes and follows for entries or votes. Instead, the guidelines now ask that brands simply discourage spam by both limiting entries and not requiring people to pin the same thing over and over. These new guidelines can be found within the Acceptable Use Policy on the Pinterest

February 21, 2017 No Comments

Use the Marden-Kane Social Tracker Tool for a Successful Hashtag Contest

Marden-Kane’s Social Tracker tool is a quick, efficient way to run a social sweepstakes or contest. A social media sweepstakes or contest is a cost effective way for your brand to gain followers and increase sales without setting up a special web site or sophisticated data collection. The Social Tracker tool tracks hashtags, likes and comments on social media platforms. Simply let us know what hashtag to track for

January 10, 2017 No Comments

Promotional Marketing Predictions for 2017

Every year at this time we discuss what the next big thing will be. Sometimes we can see it coming, and sometimes we don’t. So how did we do for this past year’s marketing predictions? Here they are so you can see! 2016 Prediction #1: Native ads will be booming – and promotions are part of that mix. Results: Native ads did turn out to be big news this

November 22, 2016 No Comments

Holiday Sweepstakes Basics: Everything You Need to Know in One Neat Package

A holiday sweepstakes is an easy affordable way to increase sales or traffic to your store. Not sure how to make it happen? We are! Just take a peek at this super early present from Santa Kane: a series of articles and links about how to run a holiday sweepstakes that we have compiled in one neat, handy package of a list. The links cover things like holiday sweepstakes planning, strategy, prizing, and legal

November 10, 2016 No Comments