Category: Social Media

Run a Legal Giveaway

Trying to figure out how to run a legal giveaway? It’s easier than you think – or not, depending on where you are running your giveaway, who can enter, how you collect and use data, and what you are giving away. First, there are some basic things to know about the legalities of a giveaway. In the United States, a giveaway, or sweepstakes in legal terminology, is when you

September 30, 2016 18 Comments

Keep Tumblr Contest Guidelines on Your Radar

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and even Snapchat seem to be the hot ticket for social promotions these days, but don’t forget that Tumblr still has a strong user base. If your target demographic uses Tumblr, and you consider running a contest or sweepstakes, make sure to keep the Tumblr Contest Guidelines on your radar. The guidelines follow many of the same parameters as other social platforms do. Namely, that Tumblr

August 17, 2016 No Comments

Are Promotional Products Still Relevant?

Stacey Novick, Account Executive, contributed this post on promotional products. The $22 billion promotion industry is constantly changing to keep up with current consumer trends and the types of promotional products, whether premiums, branded merchandise or custom logo apparel, are also changing. Knowing that social media, gaining followers or having a commercial go viral are probably forefront on your mind, we want to provide you with some information on

July 14, 2016 No Comments

Snapchat Promotion Guidelines: A Guide to Running Sweepstakes and Contests on Snapchat

If you are thinking of running a sweepstakes or contest on Snapchat, you should make sure you are following the Snapchat promotion guidelines. These guidelines make it very clear that any sweepstakes, contest, instant win game or other promotion (coupon, giveaway, etc.) MUST do the following: Be easy to enter. Have official, legal rules. Make it clear that Snapchat has nothing to do with your promotion and is not

July 11, 2016 No Comments

2016 Instagram API Changes and Hashtag Contests

Did you suddenly lose the ability to track hashtags due to Instagram changes this month? Here’s why: Back in November 2015, Instagram announced they would be changing their application policy in an effort to curtail malicious apps. On June 1, 2016 ALL apps or programs that had not gone through the new approval process and approved by Instagram were rendered unworkable. Here is the announcement and link: https://www.instagram.com/developer/review/ What this meant

June 20, 2016 2 Comments

#Hashtag Contests 101

The buzzword in contests right now are hashtag contests (or hashtag sweepstakes). These types of promotions are easy to run, less expensive than setting up a contest web site, and don’t require a lot of lead time. The simplicity and low cost appeals to a lot of businesses anxious to expand their social channels, but you will still need to follow some best practices to ensure that you don’t run

May 17, 2016 No Comments

Social Contest Platforms: Inexpensive, Easy…and Risky

Today I was sent a link to an article touting Platforms for Social Contests that will “launch and track your contest with ease.” The article then went on to list eleven platforms, all relatively cheap – well, really dirt cheap or even free – and all the wonderful features each one had. If I were looking for a way to run a contest and I didn’t know any better

April 19, 2016 No Comments

Father’s Day Promotion Ideas

Father’s Day is sneaking up on us. And if you have a product that speaks to dads, you should embrace all your dad fans out there by running a contest or sweepstakes to build up your fan base and increase brand loyalty. Here are a few promotion ideas to help your brand celebrate all the Dads out there! #DadLife Instagram Sweepstakes: New dads holding their babies. Dads coaching soccer games.

March 15, 2016 No Comments

How to Contact Winners in Social Media Contests

Running a promotion on Twitter or Instagram or other social platform is fairly easy. You basically follow the social platform guidelines, post rules, collect entries and select winners from valid posts or tweets or pins. The hard part can be contacting and clearing winners. In a traditional contest where a form is used to collect data you typically collect address and phone or email so contacting winners is easy.

February 23, 2016 No Comments

Run a Sweepstakes Overlay with a Contest to Boost Engagement

One of the downsides of running a contest is that you will get fewer entries than you would for a sweepstakes. This is expected since a sweepstakes entry requires relatively little information from an entrant and is determined by chance. A contest, on the other hand, requires the entrant to put thought into the entry submission, whether it be by creating a drawing or photo or essay or video

February 9, 2016 No Comments