Running social media contests is an excellent way to increase brand recognition, attract new consumers, and acquire quality leads. It’s a great strategy in increasing engagement, getting more leads, and tracking potential customers. However, with so many businesses employing this strategy to improve their business development, coming up with new ideas is difficult.
We’ve compiled a collection of social media contest ideas and examples to help you get started quickly and develop your brand quicker than ever!
Like/Comment to Win
The tried-and-true “like and/or remark to win” method is a tried-and-true strategy to promote engagement. It may be hosted on almost any social media site, from LinkedIn to Instagram.
Simply make a post with an explanatory caption, provide an entry deadline, and some easy instructions, and you’re done! To help spread the news, you can also share the post on Facebook or Instagram Stories.
Hashtags such as #giveaway, #freebie, #liketoenter, and #commentoenter also serve to broaden the contest’s reach.

Photo Contest
Our first social media giveaway suggestion is to hold a photo contest on social media. Your target audience can submit photos, specifically their own photos, and upload on their social media. It’s an excellent approach to collect user-generated content from your target audience, and you can use it to highlight the benefits of your products or services. In exchange for entries, ask people to take images of how they utilize your items.
Choosing a winner may be as easy as having people vote on the best photo or as complex as having a panel of judges. The contest rules can depend on your branding guidelines or whatever works for your brand and contest participants.
Video Contests
Video competitions, like picture contests, require participants to submit a video in exchange for a contest entry. By generating films announcing and advertising the prize, you may utilize a video contest to attract subscribers to your YouTube channel. This user-generated content can not only drive engagement but triggers the creative and competitive impulses of your audience which can end in better results for you.
For additional entries, you may invite viewers to share the video contest with a friend, watch a certain video, and more. This will assist you in broadening your reach and attracting additional people. Did you know that one of the easiest strategies to acquire more likes on YouTube is to host a video contest?
Surprise Follower Giveaway
Follow-to-win competitions are the most straightforward way to expand your following. To boost interaction, they’re frequently accompanied by a request for a like and share. Users must follow you in order to be eligible to win.
However, you are not required to follow the usual format. Instead, you may hold a follow-to-win contest to achieve a specified following target. When you meet your objective, you can choose a winner at random.
Vote to Win Social Media Contests
The user with the most votes wins a voting contest. This is another option for participants to spread the news about your offer, as they will share the contest with friends and family in order to gain more votes.
You may encourage visitors to vote for a winner in the comments area of your article, or you can host the contest on your website and count votes with a giveaway tool.
This sort of contest is simple to connect with a campaign based on submissions. In addition, they urged fans to vote for the winner on their Facebook page in their social media giveaway post.
Tag a Friend
This contest structure can be especially effective because a tag is theoretically a comment and a share in one. This strategy, ideally, will benefit from the ripple effect: a friend tags a friend tags a friend type of thing.
Brands with larger budgets may also choose to reward tags with double awards. For example, your beach resort may encourage followers to identify the person with whom they’d want to go on a trip with. Allowing tags to count as numerous entries is another approach to promote them.
Share/RT to Win
Like and/or comment to win competitions generate engagement with your audience, but by combining the contest with a share or RT requirement, you may reach a larger audience.
Keep in mind that if you ask followers to share to Facebook or Instagram Stories, you will only be able to confirm those shares within 24 hours.

Caption my Post Social Media Contest
Caption contests allow users to provide a caption for a picture in exchange for entries. You have the option of selecting the best caption as the winner or drawing a winner at random.
This is another simple technique to get a large number of submissions because it requires minimal effort to participate.
It’s a wonderful idea to give extra options to enter and promote this sort of contest.
Photo caption contests are a terrific way to engage people on social media. When entrants get enthralled, they frequently invite competitiveness. Photo Captions may be a lot of fun for both the contestants and the company that runs them. A Photo Caption Contest normally requires minimal ingenuity, but it has a low entrance barrier. Captions for images are submitted and voted on by users.
For your audience, the contest ends when a winner has been chosen. However, for you as the beach resort that held the social contests, it ends when the metrics have been analyzed and findings have been taken into consideration for the next marketing campaign.
Successful social media contests aren’t just about setting up the contest. You would need to engage your contest participants. This way, it can also encourage entrants to join. You can check out our previous blog post here on how to run a successful social media contest.
There are many other social media contest ideas you can try out there. Sometimes, it’s beneficial to experiment and try out what works best for your beach resort. Hopefully, we’ve helped you with these social media contest ideas compilation. If you need help with digital marketing, generating leads, and managing your social platforms, simply connect with us!