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7 Successful Facebook Contest Ideas

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Contests are great ways to get more engagement on Facebook. In order to get the maximum engagement, your contest needs to be successful. There are numerous contests on Facebook, but only a few of them become successful. In order to have a successful Facebook contest, you need to come up with the right idea in order to get more engagement for your contest. Here are 7 different ideas that will allow you to make your Facebook contests successful:

  1. Ask your fans to like a post, and then one of the people who liked that post wins the prize.
  2. Ask your fans a question about your Facebook page, blog, book, or anything else you can think of. The first person who answers wins the prize.
  3. Make the prize be one of your products. Training courses are easy and free to create on Udemy. You can also give them to people for free with 100% coupons that are easy to create. If you are an author, you can have your signed book as the prize.
  4. Anyone who writes a post mentioning your Facebook Page gets a chance to win the prize. Give your fans an extra submission for each additional time they write a post about your Facebook Page.
  5. If your fans subscribe to your blog, give them two extra submissions to the giveaway. Everyone participating in a contest strives to increase the odds. By telling people to subscribe to your blog, your email list will grow. If you promote your Facebook Page on your blog, you will get even more engagement.
  6. Over deliver to your fans. Thank your fans for making the contest special by saying something like this, “I was only going to give one [Fill in the blank] away, but since a lot of people became a part of this contest, I am going to give three [Fill in the blank] instead!
  7. Tell people to stay tuned for more contests. Some of your fans may have just been there for the contest. By telling your fans to stay tuned, the people who came for the contest will continue to be your fans. By the time your new contest comes, the people who initially came to be a part of your first contest like what is on your Facebook Page.

Facebook contests will lead to more engagement, but in order to get the best results from your contest, you need to implement one or more of these ideas into your Facebook contest strategy.

 

Why Your Blog Posts Need Stronger Headlines

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The content of a blog post offers insight to the reader. People are constantly being reminded that content is king. The significance of quality content has been proven by a variety of blogs. The blogs you commonly visit are the ones with quality content. Having a lot of followers on social networks does help out, but the content of a blog post is the deciding factor of whether or not a blog is ordinary or extraordinary.

However, the headline of a blog post has the ability to glue visitors to your blog or find somewhere else to go. The headline is the make or break part of a blog post. A good headline will result in more visitors spending the time to read your content.

The best way to realize the importance of headlines for a blog is by thinking of the newspaper. Whether you read the New York Times or the Washington Post, chances are you don’t read all of the articles word by word in a newspaper. Instead of doing that, you skim through the newspaper and look for headlines that impress you. Once you find a good headline, you will read that article.

When people share blog posts on social media, some of them don’t read the content. Some people judge whether or not to share a blog post just by looking at the headline. If the headline is good, people will share your blog posts.

Now that you know the importance of writing better headlines for your blog posts, here’s how to make those headlines better. 

Getting Different Perspectives Will Lead To Better Answers

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I was happy to learn that my blog posts, Why Following Others On Twitter Is Critical Towards Success, was featured on the Entrepreneur Showdown Podcast. Listening to Joe and Dan talking about my blog post made me think about where I had started. Listening to the discussion also allowed me to see a new perspective.

Joe liked my method. However, Dan thought that this method led to spam. He made a reasonable argument that having 20,000 followers while following 20,000 people wasn’t good. He went on to say that some people follow you just to get a follow back. Basically, everyone was working together towards getting a higher number of followers but forgetting about each other.

This would lead to just a big number at the end. Although some of the followers would be good, some of the followers wouldn’t be able to pay attention since they would be following tens of thousands of people as well. Dan argued that the influence wouldn’t be there. It would just be that big number.

I pondered about Dan’s response for a while. I realized that a Klout Score would be able to tell how influential someone is on social media. I looked up the people who had their big followings while following a lot of people. Jeff Bullas follows over 150,000 people and has over 200,000 followers. Jeff has a Klout Score over 80 which means he is very influential on social media. I have a Klout Score over 60, and I have a similar follower to following ratio.

The Klout Score is a way to determine influence, and going by the Klout Score, this strategy works. When I implemented the strategy of following others, my Klout Score went up by 10 in a month!

Don’t have your question go silent and unanswered. By asking your question, you will provide a new perspective as Dan did during the Entrepreneur Showdown Podcast.

Here is a link to the actual podcast. Thank you Dan and Joe for talking about my blog post to your listeners.

 

How To Get People To Write About You

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There are some very popular blogs out there. If you could have someone on one of those blogs write a blog post about you, that would give you more traffic and visibility. Getting these popular blogs to write blog posts about you is not as challenging as it seems. These are the ways to get people to write about you:

  1. Have a remarkable story. This part is essential towards getting people to write about you. People need to know why you are special.
  2. Get out there. Comment on other people’s blogs, follow more people on your social networks, and thank the people who write about you.
  3. Use Help A Reporter Out. Help A Reporter Out (HARO) is where a lot of media outlets go in order to find certain people. The Huffington Post, Associated Press, NBC, ABC, Forbes, and Mashable are some of the media outlets that use HARO.
  4. Ask for an exchange. Some people will write about you if you write about them. I don’t do exchanges very often, but I am open to them.
  5. Use social media to get out there. Most of the people who have written about me saw my social networks first. Social media is a tool for building awareness for you, your blog, and products.

Get out there in a remarkable way, and people will write about you.

 

How To Embed Tweets On Your Blog

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Embed Tweets On Blog

Embedding tweets on your blog has many benefits. You can use embed tweets to emphasize a point you are trying to make, showcase one of your best tweets, and get a follower, retweet, or favorite right from your blog. Here is an example of tweets being embedded in a blog post.

There are many benefits that come as a result of embedding tweets on your blog. Before you get those benefits, you need to know how to embed tweets on your blog. Here’s how to do that.

  1. Get the tweet’s link. When a tweet gets sent out, the amount of time since it got sent out goes at the top right corner of the tweet. If a tweet was sent out 8 hours ago, you will see “8h” at the top right corner  of the tweet. If the tweet was sent out on May 29th, you will see “May 29” at the top right corner of the tweet.
  2. Copy the link. You can use a URL shortener that stores the tweet for future use, but in order to complete the process, you need the entire tweet’s URL.
  3. Paste the link in your blog post. The tweet will automatically be embedded to your blog. You can click the preview option just to make sure everything will appear the way it should.

Now that you know how to embed tweets, test it out on your blog. You may come across a tweet that would do a very good job at supporting your blog post.

 

4 Clever Ways To Use Google+ Hangouts

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Google+ Hangouts are powerful ways to reach out to people for free. With Google+ Hangouts, you can do something as simple as talking with your friends or interview the experts of your niche. When you finish a broadcasted Google+ Hangout, the video goes on your YouTube channel, and it automatically gets posted to your Google+ timeline.

Cleverly using Google+ Hangouts will reward you in many ways. Here are 6 ways to cleverly use Google+ Hangouts:

  1. Offer a giveaway for the people who watch your hangout live. Promote this giveaway so people know about the giveaway and your Google+ Hangout. If you are hosting a Q&A, say that one person who asks a question will win a prize.
  2. Remember that a Google+ Hangout becomes a YouTube video. That means you can make any changes to the hangout that you would be able to make to one of your YouTube videos. You can add annotations, music, or links in your hangout in order to enhance its value.
  3. Guests have to call in, but it isn’t live until you start the broadcast. You can talk with your guest off air before you talk to them on air. If you are going to broadcast your first Google+ Hangout, you may be anxious at first. Talking with the guest will relieve you of that anxiety. Your guest may also be anxious if he or she hasn’t done many Google+ Hangouts, interviews, or public speaking. You can also make sure that you and the guest are on the same page by telling them what you will cover in the Google+ Hangout.
  4. Tell people who you are. This is what a lot of people forget. At the beginning of the Google+ Hangout, you can briefly talk about some of your accomplishments and what you are doing. Then you can introduce and talk about all of your guest’s accomplishments. You have everyone’s attention at the beginning of the hangout, and by telling your viewers who you are, they are more likely to remember who you are.