And the Winner is…

By Gregory Bortkiewicz, Landis Communications
As part of our 25^th anniversary celebrations here at LCI, we ran a Facebook competition during the month of April to donate $2,500 to one local nonprofit – here’s the blog I wrote to announce the contest. In addition to voting for a winning entry from one of four San Francisco Bay Area nonprofits, we asked entrants to give us a reason for their choice in 25 words or less.
Over the course of the month we received dozens of wonderful entries for each nonprofit. Once the contest had ended, a panel of judges assembled by LCI staff had the unenviable task of picking a winner. It was tough, but there was one entry that stood out.
We are delighted to announce that the winner of the #LCI25 Facebook competition and recipient of a $2,500 donation is….Larkin Street Youth Services.

The winning entry was submitted by Katherine Brennan, who wrote:
‘I learned how to trust. I’m not all angry and scared like I was. I’m gonna be okay. Thanks, LSYS.’ – Ranel, 16 years old.
“For 25+ years, LCI has been a part of the fabric that makes up the unique San Francisco Bay Area community. We thought it fitting, rather than just throwing a party to celebrate an anniversary, to pay tribute to the people and nonprofits in our region who daily strive to make this a better place. It is our pleasure to present a winning donation of $ 2,500 to Larkin Street Youth Services – but also a $250 check to all of our runners-up: Scholar Match, ODC and OnLok, Inc. We applaud their good work and will continue to spotlight their significant achievements.”
–David Landis, President, LCI (www.landispr.com).
Running a Successful Social Media Competition
This was my first time creating and managing a social media competition of this nature, so I’m glad everything went smoothly. Contests like this are fairly common and can be a great way to engage with your current followers and attract new ones.  It’s something I’ll be keeping in mind for the future, both for LCI and the clients with which we work. If a social media contest is something that you’re considering, here are my top five tips:

1. Use a third party vendor

I used Woobox after hearing about them at a social media training event. They offer a wide variety of contests, the platform is really easy to use and the customer support was able to deal with any questions I had quickly and easily.

2. Get the rules drafted by a lawyer

No matter how big or small the competition, the rules need to be watertight and it’s essential to have a lawyer draft them. Be sure to read them carefully yourself so that you stick to them throughout.

3. Inform the relevant people ahead of time

We got in touch with each nonprofit early on to share details of the competition and kept them informed all the way through. We did the same with the LCI staff:  it can be easy to forget about internal communications, but we made sure to keep everyone in the loop so they knew what we were doing.

4. Promote, promote, promote!

We did all we could to promote the contest on our Facebook page, including adding it as a tab under the cover photo, adding share buttons to the entry form, pinning a post to the top of our page and boosting the post too. We also encouraged each nonprofit to spread the word among their followers. We also sent them content such as social posts, newsletter copy and other ideas to help drive engagement.

5. Close the loop

As well as informing each nonprofit of the result, it’s important to tell your colleagues and followers too (hence this blog!). We’ll also be posting on social media and using this experience to inform future campaigns. Oh, and don’t forget to send the winner their prize!
What are your experiences with social media competitions? Leave a comment below or tweet me @greg_borko.