Social media contests have the power to drive massive awareness and engagement for an organization. Earlier this year we blogged about the benefits these campaigns can provide both consumer and business-to-business (B2B) companies, as well as a case study about a successful Facebook campaign we launched. While we have experience developing and executing social media contests on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, there are times we have found it makes sense to outsource the platform execution.

Recently we were tasked with creating and executing a Facebook campaign for one of our clients, Earth Class Mail. The company wanted to create viral buzz surrounding its online mail management service and drive potential customers to test drive their service by offering Facebook users an electronic coupon for a free mail scan with a subscription to their service. In addition, users will be entered into a random drawing for a chance to win a one-year business membership to Costco. This particular campaign requires that we ensure participants claim the coupon as well as participate in the company’s test drive demo on its website. In order to execute and manage this efficiently, we turned to Wildfire Interactive to help us build the infrastructure to execute the contest in a cost and resource effective manner.

Wildfire offers simple tools that allow companies and organizations to easily build interactive social media campaigns to meaningfully engage with users on social media platforms. Wildfire Promotion Builder, the company’s flagship product, offers users a wide variety of customizable campaign templates including coupons, quizzes, sweepstakes, video contests, etc. One of the advantages of using Wildfire Promotion Builder is that it allows users to leverage the viral features that social networking sites provide such as friend invites, activity streams and notifications. Many worldwide brands including Pepsi, Sony, AT&T and Universal Studios have used this tool to execute successful viral contests.

One of the best things about Wildfire is that the platform allows you to publish your campaign not only to a Facebook page but also to Twitter and a company’s corporate website, enabling organizations  to raise awareness on other social media platforms and encourage participation. The other great thing about Wildfire is that it’s affordable and offers flexible pricing options. Wildfire charges a one-time fee of as little as a $5 plus $0.99 a day –  any company, no matter how small, can easily execute a campaign. Of course the more you pay the more you can customize your contest but Wildfire can be tailored to fit any budget.

It’s not just their pricing that makes them a standout; their ease of use for setting up the campaign is extremely attractive. Wildfire’s platform pretty much holds your hand the whole way through setup. The platform provides in-depth details on exactly what you need to include in the campaign and where to include it. For Earth Class Mail, we chose the coupon campaign option and were able to customize everything from the coupon’s fine print to the Web banners without the need to know HTML or Web design.

If you are thinking about launching a social media contest or campaign and are looking for an easy way to customize and execute it, consider checking out “The 9 Best Social Media Tools for Small Businesses.” Finally, please feel free to leave us a comment if you have a perspective on effective social media tools.