Running promotions on social media sites is a great way to drum up excitement, gain exposure, increase engagement, and increase your follower count. If you’ve never run a promotion on social media, the idea may be overwhelming.

Below are a few ideas to get you started:

• Run a photo contest. Photo contests are a fantastic way to get your community involved. Ask followers to post their own photos of them interacting with your product in some way. In order to win the contest, entrants need to get the most votes. Guess how they get votes? By sharing their photos with their social networks and asking their friends to vote. What does this mean for your Facebook page? More traffic and more potential new fans.

• Run a challenge. This too can involve encouraging fans to post photos of themselves though it doesn’t necessarily involve getting votes. For example, Revlon’s “red lipstick” challenge encouraged Facebook users to post photos of themselves wearing red lipstick and then sharing their photos with their friends.

• Hold an essay contest. Photos are highly shareable, which is why photo contests are so popular. However, compelling stories are a great way to drive engagement, too. For example, you could run a contest asking fans to share their inspirational pet rescue stories, business success stories, adventure of a lifetime stories, and so on and then either pick the winner at random, have a panel of judges, or use a voting system.

• Hold a caption contest. Post a funny photo and ask fans to submit captions. You could offer a small prize to the winner or hold the contest purely for bragging rights. Either way, caption contests are a great way to get a lot of people engaging, liking, commenting, and sharing your post. Caption contests are also a lot of fun, and they allow your followers to share their wittiness.

• Hold a trivia contest. Again, you could award a small prize to the winner or hold the contest just for fun. You could also award a desirable product or service from your business.

• Hold a “how many jelly beans” contest. Remember having to guess how many jelly beans were in a pickle jar? Use a variation of this concept by posting a photo of a large quantity of your products and asking fans to guess how many. For example, a grocer might post a photo of a pyramid of tomatoes (how many tomatoes) while an accountant might post a photo of a stack of papers representing the latest IRS regulation (how many pages).

These are but a few ideas for holding a social media promotion. What types of promotions have worked for you?

Thomas von Ahn | Chief Elephant Slayer | Viral Solutions LLC