Carros usados japoneses

• País: Iceland
• Data: 2018-05-10

CAR FROM JAPAN
Given the continual rise of social media and Google’s ever-changing algorithm, quality content should play a central role in the activities of virtually any company looking to leverage the web as an effective marketing and communications channel.

Japanese used car
However, it’s no secret that creating good content is time consuming and often expensive if you’re outsourcing its creation. Fortunately, contests that rely on user-generated content can help companies rapidly scale and promote original content in a fun way that benefits both you and your readers.

Why Content Contests?
Well-designed contests immediately answer the basic question: “What’s in it for me?” Through awards of cash, merchandise, free service and even recognition, you can encourage your readers to help you generate original content–content that will help you build your business and deliver value to your visitors.

For example, if your contest requires people to submit content, a large number of entrants will likely promote the content on their own private social media channels, especially if the contest involves the need for votes. When entrants share their content on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, it’s a tacit personal endorsement of your brand.

In addition to social channels, user-generated content (UGC) is “Google Food.” From Yelp to Quora, Google returns are full of UGC. And given recent updates like Panda, fresh content is becoming ever more important to Google. Fortunately, when users create content, they end up using keywords that other users are searching for, ultimately helping you to rank for long tail terms that often elude marketers.

There are numerous ways to run online contests. However, when you focus on content, you create a fun, engaging experience for your users. And better yet, you have the opportunity to build your brand, as well as long-term relationships with your audience and customers.

Contest Example

Shoeboxed – The Messy Desk Contest

messy desk contest
Last week, as I began writing this piece, my team and I had just wrapped up “The Messy Desk Contest.”

We asked entrants to send us a picture of their messy desk, which we then promoted on our Messy Desk Gallery and Pinterest Board. The entrant with the messiest desk would receive an iPad mini with the Shoeboxed app installed. Essentially, we tied our product to a “sexy” prize and then offered this prize in exchange for simple content promotion – in this case, repins on Pinterest.

First, we created a landing page on our blog to announce the contest. We kept the contest simple, with just three steps, in order to make it as easy as possible for readers to enter:

Send a picture of your messy desk to messydesk@team.shoeboxed.com.
We’ll post the messiest desks in our official Messy Desk Gallery and on our Pinterest Board.
Get your friends, family and co-workers to repin your messy desk. The most repins wins!
To promote the contest, we purchased a week-long sponsored post and advertising campaign on Facebook. The contest was not only promoted to our 9,000 fans, but also to a larger targeted segment of thousands of small business owners. We also pushed our content out organically through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google + to drive potential entrants to our contest page.

Further, we incorporated the contest as story into our newsletter, which allowed us to effectively seed the contest to our entire user base. Finally, we used PRWeb to share the details of our contest. While PR cloud services are often weak for promotion, we earned 155 links from our release.

The results? Within the first 48 hours we received over 200 photos of the most disorganized, messiest desks you can imagine! These images now permanently live on our blog and Pinterest account, providing evergreen content for future readers to find through search and social.

In addition, the entries received thousands of repins. However, many were for just a few photos, so we will have to make an allowance for the “natural” distribution of repins in future contests. Further, we now rank, as of the writing of this piece, on the first page of Google for the term, “Messy Desk”. And, since our product helps users organize paperwork, messy desk is a really relevant keyword for us.

At the end of the week, we decided to award the prize to two entrants, since each submitted a photo of an incredibly messy desk, and, cumulatively, had thousands of repins. And, to announce the winners, we wrote a blog post that showcased the winning entries. We are also in the process of setting up a video interview so that we can leverage YouTube and other video sites.

Here’s what you need to know to create a UGC contest and get free content for your site:

Step 1: Determine the Goals of Your Contest

There are a variety of goals that you can set for your contest. However, it’s best to use something that’s measurable so you can clearly determine which contests worked and which didn’t.

Items that can be measured include:

Email addresses captured
Facebook Likes
Retweets
Photo submissions
Essay submissions
Video submissions
Links
Visitors
Unique visitors
Time on site
Sales
You might be tempted to use sales as a goal. But, generally speaking, entrants are interested in winning the prize and not making a purchase. Therefore, it’s better to focus on the long term. Look at your contest as a way to create relationships with users who can–down the road–become paying customers.

Personally, I like to focus on content submission. Good content allows me to leverage search and social to deliver “evergreen” value to the marketplace. Instead of just making a few quick sales, you are better served with an investment in growing your digital footprint and building a fan base.