The Success (?) of Our 1st Contest

[transmutator]

I have to commend Bill and his team on building a fantastic plugin for WP that provides an avenue for a business to design a contest around social media that can possibly help a site reach its tipping point.

I took my client from a single website (Uproar Entertainment - We Make Comedy Happen stand up comedy cds and dvds comedians skits and more!) added a blog, a Facebook account and Fan Page, YouTube account and 2 Twitter accounts beginning early September. Installed Contest Burner, worked it, tested it and launched an aggressive campaign for the contest which was to run Nov 1 - Dec 15th.

On the surface, I was dissappointed with the number of contestants (only 151). Additionally, we saw no increase in sales at the main website. This is no fault of CB. But we have to figure that no one was really interested in 115 comedy CDs / DVDs and $500 cash. So, when you are considering a contest REALLY evaluate if what you are offering is attractive to a wide audience.

Another thing I noticed was that just over one third of the contestants joined the contest in the last 5 days! When considering a contest, keep in mind the length of time of the contest. We chose 6 weeks because we needed to really build our social footprint - which we accomplished - but it did not benefit the contest.

My specialties are is search engine optimization and social media marketing so if you need help you can find me.

Here are the specific stats for this client's contest.

We started out with 8 “friends” on Twitter and have 1,434 on UproarComedy and 341 on UproarComedyCD. We have “tweeted” 2,156 times!

You did not have a FaceBook account and now you have a FaceBook account with 106 fans.

EVERY page of UproarComedyCD.com has been indexed by Google, Yahoo and Bing search engines 38 pages increasing page rank in just this month alone.

1,495 people visited your site in the month of November and they visited a total of 5,020 pages (3.3 pages per person).

The daily average has increased from 42 to 53

Almost 70% of all visits occur between 9am and 4pm (This tells you when to hit Twitter and FB announcements.)

Bing, Twitter and FaceBook were the highest referrers, although Google accounted for 452 visitors (nearly 1/3)

2,168 people have visited UproarComedyBlog.com in the month of November and they visited a total of 5,210 pages (2.4 pages per person).

The daily average is 72.7 visitors per day.

Twitter is the number one referrer to this site. Google accounted for only 1% of all referrals.

[syoungb]

Thanks for sharing the results of your 1st contest. As you know (I see you have entered) I am conducting our first contest this week and next (12/15 - 1/1). As I am striving to promote a very small retail web site (Turning Creations by Chuck) with this contest from a blog, Blankwood the prizes are not as spectacular in nature so I will be thrilled if the contest introduces TCBC's products to a couple hundred folks who in turn might spread the word. It was good to see your stats and know that contest burner works equally well on new sites.

Thanks for participating our contest. Good luck!