Take it from us, photo and video contests have become incredibly popular. At Strutta, we're proud to be responsible for some of the world's finest photo and video contests, and it is interesting for us to see which industries have been among the first to embrace the technology and services we offer.

The tourism industry is one of the first "trends" we've witnessed, with towns, cities, states and even countries employing our platform to promote their homeland.

It's no surprise either, since photos and videos are the best way to promote tourism (it's the closest you can get to actually "being" there). And the viewpoint of the public, through their lenses, is the most powerful and effective marketing message you can send out into the world.

Proving that our platform is flexible and scalable enough to accomodate all types and sizes of clients, we host all manners of tourism contests. Presently, we have the behemoth that is Tourism New Zealand's film competition, which is presently generating about 200,000 video views a day. Readers will also no doubt recall Tourism Queensland's "Best Job in the World" contest, a campaign that got the attention of the entire PR and advertising world last year (not one of ours, we're just fans).

At the local level, both Maple Ridge, BC and the tiny town of Bloomington, TN have used Strutta as well. Maple Ridge hosted photo contests, while Bloomington is looking for original video submissions to go with the new "unofficial" Bloomington song, recorded by Elizabeth Eckert.

The State of Wyoming is using Strutta for two contests consecutively; one for a Wyoming short film contest, and one for the Wyoming Rodeo.

Sunshine Village in Banff is hosting their second contest with Strutta- "Sunshine Village Rockstar" is a chance for bands to compete to be named the official band of the resort for 2010.

And of course, Tourism Vancouver has been hosting a video competition as well. There are still two weeks left to vote in that one, and it has generated some brilliant entries that reflect very well on the city.

For obvious reasons, we encourage other tourism boards to contact us to talk about how we can help with other promotions of this kind. Browse through the examples above, and click through the online tools we offer by clicking the green "Create a Contest Now" button at the top of this page.

You're a savvy marketer. You know your stuff. You probably already have a company blog, a Twitter account you update regularly and you may already be building a fanbase on your Facebook Page. You're happy with the way these tools let your company and its people interact with the public, but you wish you could grow your numbers a bit.

It's no secret that we believe in the effectiveness of online contest promotions, especially those involving user generated content and popular vote. With the right mix of theme, prize, and outreach, an online contest can be the most effective marketing investment you make. You have to do things right though, or you risk running afowl of the community you're working so hard to foster.

Online contests have even gained a reputation in some circles as being just a shortcut as a lead generation tactic. Admit it- you think twice before filling out any online form, and one of your biggest fears is being bombarded with unwelcome marketing messages after the fact. Not every marketer in the world conducts themselves as ethically as they ought to, so like any other marketing tactic that gets abused, contests can get a bad rap.

But when done properly, there's no denying that video and photo sharing contests can be good for community interaction, for brand visibility and yes, dear friends (I'm going to say it, and I'm not going to apologize); they're good for data collection too. It's how you use that data and how you interact with your new community that matters.

Starting at the Beginning

We've said it before, but it bears repeating. Before proceeding with your promotion, decide first what your goals are for the campaign, and let those goals determine the decisions you make in putting to the contest together. If you're after the perfect piece of user generated video, for example, your tactics might be different than if you were just trying to boost your online traffic.

Theme

Your contest theme and prize should be relevant to your company and its fans. Your campaign should attract the kind of people that you want to stay in touch with. Ask yourself: Who are we trying to attract? What ideas do we have that will motivate that community to get involved and interact? If you are lucky enough to make it fun for the right kind of people, you're miles ahead. And make no mistake, they'll appreciate your attention to detail. Let the answers to these questions guide your decisions about prizing and entry requirements. Remember to include an "opt-in" question, to obtain permission to keep in touch with people in the future. Since you've already considered the audience for your promotion, you should be able to convert a percentage of people to your email lists, especially by offering some especially useful information in the mailings.

Outreach: Spreading the Word

If you've dabbled with Facebook Groups or Pages, and you have a company Twitter account that you've been using for while, then you may already have some idea as to how to correctly communicate with an online community. If you're a fan of any Pages or Groups on Facebook, then you likely also have firsthand experience with marketers that are DOING IT WRONG. Your marketing messages and interactions should provide value for your community, not barrage them with information that only benefits you. Remember this fact: Facebook, Twitter and other social networks require that people first give you PERMISSION to contact them. If you conduct the rest of your online marketing with this same guiding principle, people will respond more positively.

If you've created an online photo, video, text or song contest (with Strutta of course) then it's time to tell the world. Yes, our tools come with the ability for contestants to share their entries with friends, via email and the various networks, but don't sit back on your heels waiting for that to happen. Rally some activity among your Twitter followers and Facebook fans, but remember to keep it relevant. Always be adding value rather than always asking for people to vote and enter.

Ask us about how to include your contest in your Facebook page using our widget (Example in photo above) to spread the message of your campaign even further within the network.

The Extras

Depending on your audience and your outreach, you want to consider additional tools and materials to help you get the message out. For larger scale campaigns, you may include ad buys in your plan, and/or physical materials like postcards or flyers.

The Aftermath

A solid campaign plan will take into account what comes after the contest period is over. So you've collected a bunch of contest data, and you've announced your winner. What next? Well, it's time to start again, but this time you have a head start.

Following Up

Well look at you! You have several online marketing tools in action, and now you're growing a database a folks who have opted in to your future communications (because we asked them when they signed up, remember?) You should be quite proud of how far you've come. But before you start filling those wonderful (relevant, interested) people's inboxes with emails, think about the best and most effective ways of getting in touch.

The list of people who opt-in via your contest promotions are special. They have given you a most precious gift- permission to send marketing info to them. Abusing this permission could be fatal to your business' future success. Careful execution of this outreach could lead to growth, so let's do it right:

1. Consider segmenting these subscribers into groups based on how they first signed up (ie. contest entrants on one list, past customers on a separate list). The goal here is to treat people who have engaged with your company in a different ways a little bit differently. By keeping these lists separate and adding a little mail merge magic, you can keep your communications with them extremely specific to their experience:
   
   

   "Greetings <their-name-here>,
   
   Thank you again for your participation in the photo contest. It was a huge success, and you can bet we will be having others going forward. We also wanted to announce...
   

   
   You get the idea. Keeping these lists properly segmented improves the communication experience for each subscriber. The numbers will prove me right; If you're using email marketing software (we recommend Mailchimp, for their ease of use, affordability and API), this extra bit of time and attention will yield better open rates, and subsequently better click-through rates from your messages.
2. Always remember to keep your information of value. If you know, for example, that all of the subscribers on one your list were from a specific industry or job category, shaping your message to be pertinent to them will also yield better open rates.
3. Have another contest! On the success of your previous efforts, you can continue to improve the ideas and executions of your campaigns, and you can encourage participation among the people how have entered your contests so far. Plus, this gives you more to talk about on the likes of Facebook, Twitter and your email newsletters.

Summarizing, the lesson here is simple. Decide first what the success of your campaign looks like, and devise the best strategy to achieve those ends. Treat your community every bit as good as you would hope to be treated, and reward their faithfulness with information that is of value to them.

They'll love you for it.

Strutta's online contest platform is now truly international. You can build and design your own online contests with user generated content, and open them up to any countries in the world you wish:

When we first launched our do-it-yourself contest platform in December, we agreed that we would continue to develop features based on popular demand.

Not surprisingly, our software has caught the attention of marketers the world over, many of whom were looking forward to hosting Strutta contests in their own countries. Our latest feature satisfies this demand, and lets contest creators select the regions they want included in their contest.

Important note: This change is more than just the addition of a dropbox containing a list of countries. Regions outside of the ones specified by the contest creator will be able to view the contest, but will be prevented from entering; their IPs blocked by a filter based on their geography. Additionally, the rules document that is included with all contest created with the software will continue to protect the interests of competitiors and their content, voters, and the contest creators in the regions they specify.

Have you tried building your own contest yet? You can try it for free- just click this link and select the "Basic" option to get started. Need help? The screencast on the homepage will help.

The best way to incorporate a Strutta contest as part of your site is to create a domain C-name.

In this example, we're going to create the Cname "contest" at www.exampledomain.com. When the settings are correct, our fictional contest should reside at http://contest.exampledomain.com. Every domain registrar has specific directions as to how to accomplish this domain change, and Google provides a list of instructions for many of them at the bottom of this page.

For the sake of this example, we'll use the specific instructions for GoDaddy, a popular domain registrar. Keep in mind for that for this to work, your DNS settings need to be pointing to your domain regsistrar itself (like it is by default when you buy it), or your domain needs to have an A-record or be CNAME'd already at the top level. Still with us? Great.

1. Log in to your account at www.godaddy.com.
2. Open the Domains tab and select My Domain Names. You'll be directed to the Domain Manager page.
3. Click the domain that you'd like to use with Strutta.
4. Click the Total DNS Control And MX Records in the box entitled Total DNS Control.
   Note: Adding entries to the Manage Subdomains section does not create a CNAME record.
5. Click Add New CNAME Record. If you've already created a CNAME record for the address, click the marker icon under the Actions column next to the existing CNAME record.
6. In the box that reads "Enter an Alias name," enter: contest.
7. In the "Points to Host Name" box, enter: hosted.strutta.com. Keep the TTL setting as the default.
8. Click OK. In the Review and status box, you can see the results of your updates.

The changes won't take effect immediately, but will before too long. If your settings in your Strutta account are set correcty, then once the change has taken effect, our example contest would be live at http://contest.exampledomain.com.

We understand that the preceeding directions can be incredibly confusing, especially if it's the first time you've ever made changes to your domain's DNS settings. It can be downright daunting. If you need a hand, hit us up at the feedback link on the top left, or using the contact info at the bottom of this page.

225 x 127. These are the magic numbers for building a great Strutta contest, and you can do it yourself in just minutes if you follow these tips:

Getting Started

Click the "Create A Contest Now" button on any page (it's on this page, at the top right). You'll be taken to the pricing matrix. For the purpose of this exercise, we are going to choose the "Basic" or free option from the grid. You will have to either create an account or sign in at this stage, so follow the prompts and you'll be taken back the first phase of contest creation:

1. Contest Type. Select your chosen media submission types from the pretty icons. Your choice of: video, photo, text, audio or mixed media submissions. For the sake of this demonstration, choose any one of these and click the save button.

2. Now we're into the fun stuff, the "Look and Feel" options. Select one of the available templates, paying special attention to the backgrounds, the location of the sidebars, the color of the voting buttons, etc. If you click the small magnifying glass in the theme thumbnail images, you'll be able to view a larger preview of that template.

We also now have the ability to add some custom images or videos to our contest. Here is where our magic numbers of 225 x 127 come in handy. That's the available size of the "Contest Logo" block, so browse and upload to your 225 x 127 contest image and upload it. Allow a few moments for the progress bar to complete before starting the next step. When that's done, you can choose an option of having an "Intro Photo" or an "Intro Video," and then upload the applicable file.

Tip: For best results, use a widescreen video. Regular non-widescreen videos are ok too though, so no worries there. If you're uploading an image, for best results use a 640 x 360 image to promote your contest in this space.

Click "Save and Continue" when your uploads are completed.

A Contest, By Another Name...

3. Next you're taken to the "Summary" page, where you will select your contest title, summary and description. In the plain-text description field, be sure to share any contest-specific rules and guidelines (ie. Videos no longer than 2 minutes, etc). Enter your name as Contest Organizer and fill out the address field.

With the free option, you can create your contest as a sub-domain of Strutta, for eg. http://AnyDamnNameYouWant.Strutta.com. If you wish, select the custom domain option, and follow the directions given. Just remember that you'll have to pay the $25 domain upgrade before launching the contest.

Strutta will generate a Contest Rules document for your contest for no charge, you just need to select what region you wish. Canada (excluding Quebec) and the US are available. Make your choice and click "Save and Continue."

Taking a Look at Your Work

4. You've come a long way already, baby. You should now be on the "Voting" tab, but before we continue, let's click the "Preview" button on the top right and see what we have so far. A new window will open, and you'll be able to preview your contest. Everything look ok? Are you sure? Because sometimes contest names and summaries are a bit too long. To make everything looks nice, make sure these two fit on one line each in the design (I like it to look that way, anyhow). If you're happy with how things look, let's choose some voting options. For the sake of simplicity, let's choose a basic popular vote option, wither either the 'Vote Count" option (voters can vote once for each entry) or the "5 Star Rating" (voters can rate each entry between 1 and 5 stars). Carefully select the contest start and end dates for your contest, and decide on a number of winners.

Note: For each "Winner" you add, you will be required to enter a prize, and approximate retail value for each in US dollars. The prize images are, you guessed it! 225 x 127.

5. In the "Options" tab, you have the ability to add any number of sponsors and survey questions to your contest.

A note about sponsors: When uploading the sponsor images, we find its best to make them all on uniform size. As you might have already guessed, using 225 x 127 image sizes will make you a nice row of four, eight or 12  sponsors to anchor your contest. If you wish to use just one sponsor image, make it a single banner that spans 950 x 127 for best results.

A note about "Survey" Questions: You can add as many as you like, but too many will scare people off, so be careful! It's a good idea to ask at least one, and here's the one I suggest: "Yes, it's ok to add me to the <Contest Creator's> newsletter." (y) (n).

6. When you're finished with all of that, you're on the final stage, "Launch." You'll be asked to agree to the terms of service, and then you can launch your contest to the world.

More notes: You can preview your site at any time, you need not wait until step 4 as I've suggested. I have it that way because after Step 4, you can view your template design as well as the contest name, etc. You may however preview the work-in-progress at any stage of the process.

Once launched, your contest site has a number of promotional features built in. Namely, the ability for any entry to be shared through a number of services and email (see the "Share" button below each entry) and the ability to embed a submission on another site (yes, that's with the 'Embed" button below entries).

Try it out, see what you think. It costs nothing to follow these instructions to create a free contest to test amongst your friends. See if Strutta has what you're looking for. We offer a number of custom options and upgrades too. If you find that you have questions, don't hesitate to address them to us using our contact form and we'll follow up as soon as we can. Our "Tour" page can be helpful too when you're first getting set up, so have a look there for even more help with setting up your first online contest using user generated content!