The Anatomy of an Online UGC Contest

So you've decided to have an online UGC (user generated content) contest.

There's a number of questions to be asked and answered, so let's take a look at a few of the important options and considerations before you begin.

First off, let's agree that there is nothing fun about saying "online user generated content contest." In the same fashion as a legal document, let's proceed by referring to this project simply as a "contest" or a "campaign" and save ourselves some trouble.

Thanks for that. I for one feel much better. Now let's continue. 

Who are You Trying to Reach?

Like any promotion, the first thing to consider is who your promotion is meant to reach, and what are the goals of the campaign?

• Is your promotion aimed at families? Kids? Teens? Businesses?
• Is it focussed on any geographical area? Local, country-wide or international?

All of the questions have implications to how your structure your contest. And whatever the answers to the above happen to be, make sure that entering the contest isn't too difficult. Meaning, if you intend to be speaking to a more mature, less tech savvy demographic, it might be too much to expect them to produce  and publish YouTube videos to enter your contest.

What Are Your Goals? 

Contests involving social media are a great way to add an element of participation and viral capabilities to a campaign, but the goals of the promotion also have a profound effects on how you build it.

• Is the contest meant to generate leads or increase the size of your online community? Maybe it's meant to attract people to sign up for your mailing list?
• Is the goal simply to create awareness for a product, service or cause? 

How you answer these questions is important, and helps determine the amount of required fields in the form that site visitors complete to enter. If awareness is the goal, for eg. you may want to put an emphasis on having top quality content featured, and make any voting processes or "user" interaction (visitors not submitting media, but still participating) as easy and fun as possible.

What's the Prize? 

The incentive that you've provided (prizes!) will have an enourmous impact as well. Determine the number of possible "types" of people participating in your contest, and consider making prizes available for each. For eg. if you have a people's choice vote AND a judge's choice, each should have a prize, and another random prize for voters. 

This is a good time to determine exactly what kinds of media people can submit to your contest. Videos are just plai to fun to watch, and have the potential to be viewed by a very large audience, but not everyone is that savvy. You might consider allowing text submissions with photos, or even just one of the two.

How Does Voting Work? 

This is an extremely important consideration, and one that is closely tied to both the contest rules and administration.

• Will you allow just one vote per person?
• Would you prefer one vote per day, to encourage people to come back to support their favourites?  
• Who can vote?

It's important to display this information clearly on the contest site too. In plain sight, and as part of the official rules as well. Keep in mind that a comprehensive legal document, including the full contest rules, will be required.

Everyone's a Winner, Baby

When it comes time to decide on winners, follow the guidelines that you set out in your contest rules to determine the winners, either by judge's choices, by popular vote or by random draw (or all 3, if that's the case). 

Once the contest is finished and the winners have been announced an notified, update the contest site to reflect those annuncements and keep it live. Especially in the case of social media contests with engaging content, visitors might like to enjoy the submissions long after the contest is closed, and there's no sense turning away that traffic. Celebrate the people whose creations helped the success of your campaign, and when possible, share all of the results with the public. 

Hopefully, this has helped you with some of the planning of your contest. We'll continue to publish these short tutorials to help you better understand this space, but in the meantime feel free to ask any questions in the comments below, or to me directly: jordan [at]strutta.com. 

*images: "Rock the Vote" by Nakano.photography, "iPod Video" by Alexandre van de Sande, "Vote" by Liz Henry, "I Voted" by billaday, "Flickr buddies" by sarcha, "Girl celebrate by Amor Ministries.