We all know about the benefits that social media provides both consumer and business-to-business (B2B) companies. It can help raise visibility of a company, provide a powerful channel to engage with target audiences and can help create brand loyalty. But what if you’re a new company or an organization just starting to build a presence via social networks? How do you quickly build awareness and increase your following to make the investment in social media worthwhile?

While there are a variety of ways to grow your fan base and increase engagement, social media contests are a fantastic option to consider to accomplish this goal. Contests can be cost-effective and easily executed with limited resources and can lead to some amazing results.

We recently completed a project in which we executed two Facebook contests to help a company increase its Facebook fans, drive viral buzz surrounding its website and encourage target audiences to try its service.

Our first Facebook campaign began in mid-March. We partnered with the client to encourage target audiences to become fans by offering to send each person a complimentary iTunes song while simultaneously entering them into a random drawing to win an iPod Touch. The monetary investment for the prizes was manageable and the response was incredible. Through this campaign, we made excellent traction and more than doubled the company’s Facebook fan base.

After the success of this initial campaign we executed a second Facebook campaign in which we leveraged friend referrals to continue to increase the company’s fan base. Fans and current customers were asked to refer their friends to become Facebook fans. The person with the most referrals received a grand prize. In addition, a daily winner was selected via a random drawing. The company gave out prizes to the daily winners including an Amazon gift card, iTunes gift card, flat screen TV and a flip camera.

Consider these results:

• Over the course of one week, the company saw a 300 percent growth in its Facebook fan base.
• The company garnered positive comments via its Facebook fan page from consumers about how they benefitted from the company’s service and how much they enjoyed participating in the contest. In fact, 123 people posted comments on the company’s page about the two contests.
• Since these two contests, new fans have been engaging regularly on the Facebook fan page driving viral buzz around the client’s products. These contests also provided an open channel for the company to secure feedback from consumers.

One final example, Communiqué PR launched a Twitter contest back in February to help celebrate the firm’s sixth anniversary. The objective was to see if we could leverage social media contests to increase brand awareness and facilitate deeper engagement with our followers. The contest ultimately helped drive traffic to our website traffic as well as drove sales for Colleen and Jennifer’s book, “Strategic Public Relations.”

For more tips for executing a successful social media campaign, please contact us.