These photo and video contests seem quite popular, of all of a sudden. Why do you suppose so many marketers are choosing to brave the waters of social media and user generated content?

Because it works. And to illustrate that fact, here are ten reasons why video and photo contests are such a great marketing investment:

10. You Start a Dialogue With your Community

For many, a photo or video contest is their first foray into social media. The first time that they have publicly reflected any online participation with the public at large. And that can be a little scary. But when you consider that people will be vying for the attention (and prizes) of your company, and you have the option of moderating entries before they go live, there really isn't much to be afraid of. So give it a shot! It's a great way to start. Bonus Example: Barkbusters, whose photo contest was immensely popular with pet owners, and even got them some air time on a morning tv show.

9. It's Fun

If your contest idea is a good one, people will enjoy entering and collecting votes. What's more, you will enjoy seeing the submissions come in. The quality and quantity of entries may even suprise you. Tourism Vancouver's video contest (still live as of this writing) has collected some fantastic images of the city.

8. They're Good for Traffic and SEO

The kind of activity that photo and video contests attract are great for SEO. You get loads of new and returning visitors who have meaningful interactions with your site. The added traffic will boost your search juice.

For bonus points: Link people to other areas of your site from the contest page, and track their activity in your stats.

Jazz Sudbury's contest now appears on page one in a search for the festival, sending more traffic to the festival site for info, while simultaneously scouting talent who could win a chance to perform.

7. The Public Has Good Ideas

With apologies to your advertising agency, the best idea they could pitch to you this year would be to accept ideas and submissions from your community. A video or photo contest could yield some world class content that is better than you expected. You'll never know if you don't ask. Sex Panther, the hot new scent licensed from ther popularity of Anchorman, the movie, now has a plethora of excellent "spokes growlers" to choose from, after their fun video and audio-based contest.

6. It Gives You Plenty to Talk about on Facebook, Twitter

Often, your company blog, Twitter account and Facebook Page can go a long time with no updates. An exciting contest of this kind mixes things up, attracts new people to the fold, and provides you with many small 'wins' that you can announce. "Check out this great entry!" or... "Only two weeks left to vote..."

Contestants from Ypreneurgene.com and PropertyGuys.com have been lighting up the Twittersphere with their video contest, where the prize is a $100,000 PropertyGuys.com franchise.

5. You Look Cool

We're giving you permission to have some fun with your contest campaign. If your corporate website and marketing materials tend to skew towards the more 'functional' side (read: boring), then a contest gives you a chance to spread your wings outside of that stuffy box, for once. Splash some color into your campaign, and make it stand out from everyhting else you do. Make it looks as cool as you want. This stuff is meant to be fun and engaging, so pull out all the stops.

BCIT cut loose, had a bit of fun and got some great student video submissions with their 3BlogNights event and video contest.

4. You Make "Fans"

You already have fans. You just might not know it yet. A photo or video contest will reflect that community, and bring them closer to you. The ones who place as finalists, win prizes or interact directly with your company will be left with a positive impression. They will become brand ambassadors on your behalf.

From the author's own past: When I was 13 years old, I won a trip to Toronto to attend a (Coca-Cola sponsored) hockey camp with none other than Wayne Gretzky himself. Today at lunch, I ordered a soda with my fish my and chips. Can you guess which brand? (I promise to update this post with photographic proof of my meeting with His Greatness).

3. It Keeps Getting Easier

Each subsequent contest gets easier, for a number of reasons. First, you will have a better understanding of how people respond to contests. You may have thought of an even better idea for the next campaign. You also have a database of people who entered in the past, whom you can invite to participate again. You may even have design assets that can be re-used for future campaigns, limiting your costs to start another contest.

Launch Party Vancouver has used Strutta to power the last several startup competitions, using video, popular vote and judges. Each time, they get a larger number of submissions, votes and views- as more and more community members already have voting accounts, and know exactly what to expect.

2. Find Out More About Your Customer

With the option of adding survey questions or customer-specific contest requirements, you can ask and obtain more information from the folks who enter your contest. Choose carefully what you ask, because each form makes entering a little bit more difficult. But there may be questions that your marketing department would love to learn: ie. zip code, profession, preferred breakfast cereal. If you're on the ball, you'll also ask for permission to send updates about your company, or about future contests.

1. 'Free' Marketing

Yes, this is number one for a reason. There simply is no better way to spread the message about your campaign than to have the masses do it for you. And if your video or photo contest has a popular vote element, people will be climbing all over themseves to spread the word on your behalf. Think of all the tweets, Facebook wall posts, and personal emails to uncles and aunties that will bear your name and brand. When you look at it that way, it's easy to see why contests (especially those with user content and popular vote) are such a great marketing investment.

Family Video's "Hotel for Dogs" photo contest generated an average of over 100 votes per entry among their top vote-getters, creating a voting frenzy among proud pet owners. This month, Family Video published a new contest- this time it's a movie review video contest. They know from experience that with a fun and topical contest, the community will do a lot towards spreading the word about the campaign.

Contests are a great marketing tool. Like any other tool available to you, it can be extremely effective when handled properly. If you reflect on the above list, you will likely realize your own reasons why contests will make sesne for your company. And that's the beauty of a contest promotion- it can be very unique and specific to your message, be fun and engaging for visitors, and still accomplish your overall marketing goals.

We hope this helps you see the value in using contests in your marketing, but we understand if it doesn't answer all of your questions for you. That's where we come in.

Contact us at 1-877-477-5717 so we can chat about how to make a contest part of your campaign.

A case study of online competitive video dynamics

In the few years YouTube has been around, it has grown into a powerful new medium which has affected fame, politics, marketing and activism. Yet in spite of its powerful cultural impact, there seems to be very little information that talks about how exactly YouTube works and how it has the effect it does.

This is not a big surprise: like other web giants, YouTube is a closed, monolithic web service. To help its users sift through the massive video database, sophisticated algorithms produce real time charts, generate content suggestions and map video relations. And just like Google PageRank, the algorithms behind all this have become a valuable trade secret.

This raises a bunch of questions. Is there such a thing as a 'PageRank' on YouTube? Just how does a video get popular? Does everyone have an equal chance at fame?

These questions become even more important when you consider the phenomenon of online contests powered by user-generated media. And of course, that's something that we're very interested in here at Strutta...

It's been several weeks since we first started launching contests built with our platform. Before the inevitable flurry of activity that our launch will create, I though it would be a good time to give updates on some of the recent ones.

1. Operation Gratitude "Letters to Our Troops." We start with OpGrat because the contest is still live, and there are only a few days left to submit your letters to the troops in time for them to receive them this holiday season. This one is one entry per email, but you may submit as many letters as you wish, and THAT is what it's all about. As it stands now, the promotion has generated more letters than in any previous year, but they're still short of the 50, 000 or so that they would need for each care package they'll be sendng to the troops this Christmas. What are you waiting for?

2. Boston Pizza "Designer Pizza Vote" contest. As we've already announced, this one ended a few weeks back, and now a winner has been announced. Bryan Hayter of Woodstock Ontario will be enjoying a free large pizza every week for a year, the lucky devil. 

3. Give a Better Life Foundation "Vote for Your Cause." Launched just a short time ago, this is already gaining loads of traction. Because there are 11 great charities involved, there has been a flurry of voting activity for all of them among their supporters and friends. Visit the site and cast your vote for your favorite charity today while there's still time. 

4.Jiibe and Capulet's "Jiibe Connection." Created by Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo of Capulet Communications for their client Jiibe, this little number (that features a videoby GiantAntMedia) is already getting talked about in the HR community. Of all the contests we've built, this one is the easiest to enter. Just make your choice, enter your email address and you're entered to win an iPod Nano. 

Over the next few weeks, you'll be seeing more examples of Strutta contests, but they'll built by some of our friends, who will be the first to access our wizard, which should be very exciting to watch unfold. 

If you have questions about these or any other contests, don't hesitate to get in touch. 

The soon-to-launch "new version" release of Strutta puts all the power of our technology into your hands.

Whether you are a competitive video creator looking to host your own contest, a marketer wanting to create a UGC (user generated content) contest for a client, or a brand manager that wants a fully customizable contest platform API, the new Strutta will have something for you.

Just yesterday our development team turned a corner that represents a very significant milestone. They sat back in their chairs and started evaluating the mostly-finished product, making the finishing touches before we give you a first glimpse in just a few days time. The good news is that this will free up our beloved team to start telling you the story of how this is all coming together. Over the next two weeks I'll be coaxing them out into the sunlight, and each will share a few notes about our process or our product from their perspective. 

In addition, the "look and feel" of this blog will seemingly change overnight sometime in the very near future, to better match the elements we've already released (see inset photos). When that happens, expect nothing less than total "Strutta team" access via our blog. Our Sr. User Interface Designer Ross Howard-Jones has built a new theme for Drupal that will give you access to such basic blog features as: Search! Archives! Photos! And if I can help it, regular contributions from team members not named Jordan.

Thanks again for your pateince while we prepare to launch. Remember that we're always listening, so if you have any questions or feedback, you can leave them here as comments or hit us up on our contact form.

The Boston Pizza Designer Pizza Vote has come to an end, and the results are in.

For our team at Strutta, the most important metric we measured this time around was how the client felt about the experience and the technology. "We had the pleasure of working with Strutta on a brand new venture for our company," said Ryan Ashton, National Advertising Manager for Boston Pizza International. "From idea conception through to final deployment, including all project management work, they assumed the role of experts and navigated us through to the end product, which we couldn't be more pleased with."

We're equally delighted to be working with them, and we're glad the promotion was such a big success. The winner of the grand prize of free pizza for a year hasn't been announced yet, but we thought that now would be a good time time share a few details about how the contest was operated and even give you a sneak peek at some of the results.

Contest Type

The Designer Pizza Vote falls into the "product testing" category, where the "contestants" (in this case, six very bold pizza designs) are already determined, and visitors vote to pick their favorite. 

Software Used

The "pizza carousel" at the core of the vote is now legendary. Senior Architect Steven Wittens created it as a fun experiment with javascript, and people have been mistaking it's smooth fluidity with Flash ever since. When our clients at Boston Pizza saw the first versions of it, a quick decision was made to feature the carousel right on their home page, as a widget. 

Who Could Enter? How?

The contest was open to all Canadians over 13 years of age with a valid email address. Each visitor could register just one vote for their favorite, and immediately see the results in a pie chart (Get it? Pie chart? Just checking).  

Results? 

I'm sure the biq question on everyone's mind is "Which of these delicious pies won the vote?" In the end, it wasn't even close. The Canadian Classic took first place with 33% of votes, while the remaining contestants split the rest. It's tempting to think that it's all in a name, and that Canadians were just voing patriotically, but Francis Steiner of Let'sGoForDinner.com seemed to suggest that the rest of the recipes were just too polarizing in a popular vote. "It (the Canadian Classic) was closest to one that I would actually eat," said Steiner, when reviewing the choices.

While we will protect the actual figures of the votes out of respect for our clients, there are a few numbers that are just too good, so we HAVE to tell you. During the period of the contest, BP experienced the largest increase in subscribers in the history of their email club campaign. By offering both a grand prize and a free appetizer coupon just for voting and the opt-in email form converted a whopping 91.8% of all voters. We'd love to take all of the credit for making it so easy for all involved, but that kind of conversion rate tells a story about people's affinity to the Boston Pizza brand as well. Due to the fact that two promotions were running concurrently, all of those email club subscribers were rewarded with a free personal pizza coupon after their first week, a happy accident for Boston Pizza as it inevitably creating a new army of faithful BP fans, whose lifetime value as customers will mean that BP will enjoy the benefits of this promotion for years to come.

"Our experience in dealing with Strutta has been nothing short of spectacular, said Ashton. "And it's easy to see that we'll be joining forces with them again down the road for bigger, better and more engaging initiatives, which I know they'll come through on."

We look forward to it, and we'll be sure that you're the first to know when we have more news to share on what's next. 

If you have questions about contests like this one, or promotions that use user-generated video, photo or text submissions, visit our contact page and we'd be happy to talk to you about what your options are.