Launch a Pinterest Contest
Melanie Duncan
Lessons
Bonus Video with Purchase: Create/Convert to a Business Account
07:39 2Bonus Video wtih Purchase: Business Resource Center
04:25 3Bonus Video With Purchase: Your Profile
06:27 4Bonus Video With Purchase: How to Create Boards
10:16 5Bonus Video With Purchase: How to Edit Your Pins
03:17 6Bonus Video With Purchase: How to Follow
02:01 7Bonus Video With Purchase: How to Pin
07:46Bonus Video With Purchase: How to Search
02:31 9Bonus Video With Purchase: Liking and Commenting
03:39 10Day 1 - Pre-Show
04:46 11Intro & Power of Visual Marketing
30:12 12Using Pinterest as A Business
29:08 13Business Pinterest Account Q&A
23:39 14What's Working Now on Pinterest
44:54 15What's Working Now Pt. 2 & Q&A
24:50 16Guest Instructor: Christine Tafoya
40:39 17Q&A with Christine & Melanie
34:16 18Get More Clients
46:06 19Student Hot Seat
16:17 20Final Q&A
18:22 21Day 1 - Wrap-Up
02:32 22Day 2 - Pre-Show
07:05 23How to Build Pinterest Followers
42:21 24Build Followers: Expert Panel
43:23 25Promoting Content with Crystal Palecek
40:16 26Traffic Strategies: Crystal & Melanie
26:56 27Increasing Traffic from Pinterest
1:00:58 28Hot Seat: Adam / Artful Gentleman
25:28 29Launch a Pinterest Contest
39:24 30Contest Marketing & Follow-up
29:10 31Contests Recap & Final Q&A
12:31 32Day 2 - Wrap-Up
03:34 33Day 3 - Pre-Show
08:15 34Building Your Email List with Pinterest
46:00 35About Me Pages & Q&A
34:38 36Building Your Brand with Images
48:27 37Q&A & Student Hot Seat
21:26 38Branding & Design with Christine Tafoya
23:44 39Branding Hot Seat: Artful Gentleman
19:09 40Branding & Design Hot Seat
10:25 41Christine Tafoya's Graphics Package
07:55 42Student Hot Seat & Q&A w/ Christine Tafoya
20:04 43Thank Yous & Devin Duncan
15:39 44Optimizing Your Website
47:59 45Workshop Recap
14:15 46Day 3 - Wrap-Up
03:11Lesson Info
Launch a Pinterest Contest
Okay, last session of the day, Everybody with me or a finish strong. We're gonna talk about one of my favorite favorite concept to talk about with Pinterest, which is contest. And this is where it gets fun. Because even if you're one of those people in your washing your thinking okay, Pinterest sounds good, but I don't really want to have to maintain a whole nother social media account. That sounds like a lot of work. I'm not really sure, But you want to test out and see if this is really a platform. It's the right place to be set spending your time and energy, I think a great place to get started with the Pinterest contest. And like I said earlier, you don't have toe have tons of followers already. In fact, you can do a Pinterest contest. Even if you have no followers. It can be a very effective way to jump start your page. So for those of you out there that are really looking for that one quick hit of how to get a lot of followers quickly, your solution is actually a Pinterest contes...
t. Now, that being said, let's kind of talk about the guidelines, right? Any time we talk about a contest, we've got to talk about, what are the dues, the dotes? The cool thing is Pinterest actually has a lot less guidelines, and Facebook does. If you run a Facebook contest, there's a lot of stuff you have to pay attention to. And really, they only came out these guidelines a few months ago, maybe even one or two months ago. So it's relatively new, and I also like to say again and not a lawyer. So don't trust me for legal advice, but these are guidelines. These aren't rules, so these air things to take into consideration, to be respectful of. But you'll also see that coming from a marketing standpoint, there are some things that I choose to do a little bit differently than how they exactly say to do it. Because I have particular metrics and results. I'm looking to get from my contest so you might see some of things here, like it says, don't require people to pin from a selection. Every Pinterest contest you've probably seen actually does do this where they ask you to. Here's our vacation board. Please pen three pens off of vacation board to be entered into win Our trips. Tahiti. So you do see a lot of brands actually do choose to run their contest a little bit differently than what Pinterest says. Official do's and dont's are so it's up to you how you want to run these. These air guidelines things to keep in consideration. But they also tell you like What's the big stuff? So they say, Don't make people pin or repent your contest rules. This is a biggie. So there's things like this is Pinterest is saying Please, you know, take all this into consideration, But please don't do this one particular thing, which I always want to be really respectful of. So for me, I don't want have people pinned my contest rules, but you'll see when I start showing you examples of my contest pin. I still have pins that I make a require for them to repent for the contest that promote the contest. Talk about the brand, but it doesn't have the 12345 Everyone seen those contest pins. They're normally really tall, and they have, like, six lines of text, and they're super confusing. They say okay to be a part of this Pinterest contest, Please follow us on Pinterest. Then pin three things from this board. Go to our site, leave a comment, then make sure to go to the Facebook page and email selling to your board and your thinking. Are you kidding me? That sounds like a lot of work for, like, a pair of shoes or, you know, whatever the prize is. So let's do the official guidelines. And then what kind of talk about the best ways to streamline and make your contest effective? So they say, Don't suggest that Pinterest sponsors or endorses you or the contest That's pretty self explanatory, right? They don't want you to say, Here's a Pinterest hosted contest provided by Pinterest featuring luxury monograms. You can't do that, they say. Don't require people to pin from a selection. Let them pin their own stuff. Now this is something that I've actually seen. Most businesses, like I said, do a little bit differently where they do say, you know, please pin three things off of this board, but you can choose how hard oven enforcement you want to do with that. Also, they say, Please don't run a sweepstakes where each pin Repin board like or follow, represents an entry. And what this means is, if you run a contest and you say, Hey, every single thing you pin from our site gets you an entry into the contest, it's much more likely that you're gonna encourage spammy behavior or that people are going to go a little crazy with promoting your particular content. And Pinterest wants to keep it more of an even playing field. So this makes sense. You know, really, one entry per person is what makes the most sense for using a contest. They say Don't encourage spanning behaviors such as asking participants to comment again. They don't want you to say, Make sure you go in comment on every single one of these pans or to be entered. You have to comment the boulevard. They don't want super spammy aggressive behavior. I really don't think this is going to be a problem for anyone, just things to be aware of, he said. Don't overdo it. Contest can get old fast for me. That's a very general guideline. Don't want us. Don't overdo it being so. I guess it depends on your business and it depends on, you know, like I told you, we ran a contest and we chose to pin the contest pin one. Today you come out to be effective. People still responded to it. No one said we didn't get a bunch of unfollowed. I think you're going to be able to gauge what overdo it. Iss more from your audience necessary than from what Pinterest considers over doing it because they don't really describe it. And they say don't require a minimum number of pins. One is plenty. One is still a minimum number if we're gonna get technical on Pinterest. But anyways, you'll see a lot of contest that are formatted that say you have to pin at least 10 things from our board. If dependent, least five things. Three things. I think tangible numbers are helpful, but they're saying a guideline is baby, Just say, Hey, pin a few things off of our board to be a part of the contest. So again, depending on how strictly some people love rules, some people love to break up. I am not your legal adviser. So how you choose to do it is up to you. But the dues. There are some dues. Do you remember that Pinterest is all about people discovering things that inspire them do reward quality, pinning over quantity. So maybe Maura about curation, maybe about having them, you know, pin some things from our site. But then also pin some other things you found online that you think complimented jets that air had a very successful Pinterest contest. Increase air traffic by over 200% because they had people create destination board. They said, pin travel destination. That's on our site. So maybe you want to pin Miami and then pin things that you would wear in Miami pin places you would go in Miami pin. You know, all sorts of different ideas around what you would do in Miami, what you would eat the beaches you like. So they created these really interesting boards versus just Hagel pin a bunch of stuff off our site. They made it more of an experience more Discovery Board that people could really engage with more. And this brings us to an interesting point, which is some most actually large companies that run Pinterest contest. The structure they use is they have you created board. So they'll say, You know, say Jetsetter said, Okay, create a Jetsetter travel board and pin stuff from our site. Pin some things that you want to do in the area, things that you would wear cool stuff about that destination. I tend not to have people create boards. I think it looks more sponsored. What I do is I normally say Hey pins himself off of our site and they can choose what board they put it on because it looks more organic. Does that make sense if you've got? And I think it's something that some big branding agency out there said, Okay, you do it this way, and then everyone else kind of copy them. But looking at it subjectively, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Toe have big sponsored boards. People aren't gonna trust it as much as your general, your natural, authentic curation of things that you like, which is what Pinterest is all about. But again, we're gonna talk about how to structure it in the pros and cons of the different ways to structure Pinterest contest Coming up, they said, Do read our anti spam measures to keep your contest fun and useful. Nothing fun. Like reading anti spam measures, Right? All of that. You can find the terms and service and also business dot Pinterest dot com. They will show you case studies of contests they will show you do's and don't. So if you really want to sink your teeth into that, go to their their site and they do check out our branding guidelines if you're going to reference Pinterest in any way. So again, using their likeness, yada, yada, normal kind of corporate speak for what they have to say for using contests, I am sure we're gonna get some questions about I live in Nebraska. One of the rules for running a contest in Nebraska because they do tend to vary by state. I surprisingly don't know all of the top my head, I know, but you can google them. You can go and say contest rules for running. You know something in Washington versus running something internationally. They do differ on a big fan of the disclaimers. Never run a contest. I only have a disclaimer that talks about you know I'm not liable for X y z bo blah, blah. There's lots of little templates You confined online contest disclaimer You can put at the bottom of a block post to kind of cover your basis. Um, but let's talk about why you should run a contest in the first place. Like I said, it is a phenomenal, probably one of the best and the fastest ways to get followers. So if you're starting out or one of your main goals right now on Pinterest to get followers, you should be running a contest also to increased traffic. Since most Pinterest contests involve you pinning something off of your site, guess what they have to do to be a part of the contest. They had to go to your site, and that is always a good thing, because once people on your site to pin something, they might see something they want to buy. They might see a block post a love that they want to share with a friend. They might send it for your newsletter. So we love this. We love this increasing traffic as a byproduct and brand that have done this have seen it is a very natural and very effective byproduct of a Pinterest contest and also to collect leads. Like we said, if you are optimizing your website to generate leads to generate email subscribers, you can use a contest to collect a lot early that I'm gonna show you how even after a contest ends, you can use it to get a bunch of people on your email list. So most small business owners contest fail. It's true. Um, anyone have any ideas? Why this ISS? Any idea the online audience Worldwide audience. Let me know if you think you might understand because we kind of want to talk about what not to do. And then we can talk about what? To dio. Rachel. Thing that is most confusing to me is if I don't have much of a following and I put out that I have a contest yet and no one sees it. Nothing's gonna happen. Yeah, and you know what most people dio they launched a contest on Pinterest and they only promoted on Pinterest. If you don't have the followers on Pinterest contest, I mean there are something you can do to get exposure. We'll talk about on Pinterest for a contest, but that is a great thing. So if I don't have the followers. Of course, my conscience is gonna fail, so we'll talk about that, Adam. Yeah, I think my mind's that same point. You know, you only have 10 20 followers and maybe one or two people participate. The other other aspect is I think people have to feel that they have to make a huge investment like four grand prize sort of thing, and then and then the contest. I don't feel that they got as much bang for the book, and that's very important. You know, when you're running a contest is a business owner. You need to look at what recesses resource is air going into this. What are we spending for the prize? How much time is it taking for us to execute a contest? I think a lot of people think that sounds like a lot of work. A contest like, what is this going to take? How are we going to narrow the entries? That sounds like an overwhelming project, so that can definitely be a concern people have. But the reason that most businesses fail on our most business contests fail on Pinterest is because there's no clear goals people will do a Pinterest contest and go, I don't know. I saw someone else do it. I think we should do it, but they're not going okay. Our goal is to increase traffic to our site, and because of that goal, we can work backwards and the way we structure our contest will lend itself to increasing traffic. But what they do is they say, Well, we're in a contest because we've seen people run contest. How will we structure it? Because there's a lot of different ways to run Pinterest contest. You've probably seen the board curation ones. You've probably seen the pin it to win it ones. There's a lot of different, you know, collaboration and people tend to go all this run the contest like the last person I saw all do that, but there's no clear strategy. There's no goal and we can't work backwards from that. So the contest ends up being very myth because if you don't know what the results of your what you want the results to be, there is no way that your customers are going to be able to aid in accomplishing that, because if it's not clear to you, it's definitely not clear to them. So that's what we're gonna be talking about being very intentional in the strategy of your contest. So you do see those results you asked, and the people have answered, What are some other things? Why they thought it would fail, perhaps before you gave the answer. But people are wondering if it's the prizes themselves are not quite valuable enough. And I know we mentioned that earlier. People will do a lot for just the potential of a little. But Claire Bar A said again, not enough people know Alaska and not enough reach not enough enthusiasm and what they have to offer the prize isn't valuable, Valerie. Yes, that is I'm really glad that you did bring that up again, because that is one of the biggest misconceptions is you spend a ton of money on a prize. That is not true. But it does have to be a good prize. You know, if you're gonna offer one of your products, don't choose. And this I seriously see people do this. They're in their warehouse or whatever. They're like how we got a bunch of those T shirts and never sold. Let's offer that is a contest prize? No. So you don't want to do that? You want? Offer your best selling product as the price, not something that you have left around, or here's the cheapest thing we have. Let's go ahead and throw that out there. You want to be something that you know your audience is going to respond to, that they're going toe like, because it is the incentive for whatever exposure they're going to get you. So as much as it's not about a certain dollar amount or some incredible trip around the world or something super swanky, even if it's something that's not a lot of money or super expensive, it should still be relevant to your audience and something that you know they're going toe want. So it should be connected. And we're going to talk about specific ideas for prices coming up. So contest do work. You know, we talked about jets that are increasing their traffic. Wayfair, which is a home to course site, increased their sales by 500%. Their sales, so not just their traffic and Victoria Secret actually gained 11,000 new followers, and they first started out just by running a contest. Now I don't want you to close your ears and say, Well, of course, Victoria's secret can do it. I'm not saying if you're a small business, you're going to 11, followers the first week of your contest. But these are all very specific and very attainable things as a result of a Pinterest contest, and the time to run a contest is now. If you're just starting, it is right now. It also is because, like anything else out there, the more popular the more people do it, the harder it is to break through the clutter, and particularly for service providers. I spent I created a particular course around running Pinterest contests, and I spent months trying to find a service business that ran a contest, uses a case study. I put out all my feelers. I asked people I posted on my page. Nobody had ever heard of a service business running a contest in that crazy. And trust me, I broke it down for how to do this, and it is very, very possible. So if you're a service provider, you've got a lot of opportunity here because nobody else is doing this. But also for product product sellers and people who have content. They want to get out there in a big way. There's still a lot of opportunity to do it smart. You may see a lot of pin it to win it contest floating around. Like I said, the majority of them have absolutely no strategy. So when you come in, you know what you want to do. When you have a clear plan to follow, which is what I'm going to give you. You're gonna be a huge advantage. So here's what's possible. An audience is what is possible, and there's no use having great products, creating great art, writing great articles, filming great videos. In my opinion, if there aren't people to appreciate them and there aren't people toe, watch them. And a lot of us go into business because we want to have an impact right. We want to be able to reach more people, to help more people, to be known by more people. And to do that, you have to have an audience and online. That could be something that you can use a lot of strategies to do. You can do paid traffic. You can obviously use social, that type of stuff, but contest help you reach a larger audience faster than a lot of other strategies online right now. So here's from the results. So I ran a Pinterest contest for luxury monograms. We first started out, and I'm going to show you the exact contest pen I use. I'll show you some of the boards how we structured on our site, all of that. But the results were pretty cool. We did have a huge increase, a spike in traffic. But we actually got most of our sales after the contest ended and there was something we did really specific. I'm going to share with you guys that I've never talked about before that caused that results. I want you to pay attention to that because I focus on traffic generation during the contest and I focus on the sales after it. So that's just a little a little teaser tidbit for you. But for the most part, a contest of the three part process you've got the structure, the marketing and the follow up. Most people don't even do number one, right? We talked about the way they structure the contest. What the requirements are they don't even really put thought into that. I just kind of do what they've seen online. Or they read an article that someone wrote. They go, OK, I think that's what I'm supposed to dio. Hardly anyone markets their contests properly. If you market a contest, that is where you're going to see the traction. So we're gonna talk about how do you market a Pinterest contest for free? I'm not talking about he paid stuff here, but you need to create a buzz and excitement and make your contest something people want to share and talk about. Because contests, really the power comes from them being viral. When you can get a contest to go viral, that's where you really see those good results and the follow up. Most people run a contest. It ends, that's you never hear anything from them ever again. And that is a shame because these air people, if they wanted what you were going to give us a prize and it's something within your own business, they're interested in what you have to offer. So why aren't you following up with them after the contest and using this excited and engaged group of people and turning that into clients and customers. So we're gonna talk about how to do the actual with a follow up, which hardly I mean, I don't know anyone that's doing that right now. Everyone with me were good. Okay, so we're gonna jump right into the structure and talk about some do's and some don't. So this was the actual contest paged I used on my site for luxury monograms. And this is something we hosted you could put on your blog's. We actually had it on our main website. It was just luxury monograms, forward slash contests contest, and we had a great, really clear pennant to win it. I think that that is really great to use for a Pinterest contest because it's instantly recognizable. We hear pin it to win it, we know. Oh, that's a Pinterest contest. So instead of you know, having no contest and people don't know is this on Facebook? This is just some random sweepstakes. What's going on? I always like to use the term pennant to win it. Just think it's clarity. It short, sweet people get it. And then, of course, I have my call to action which you all know I love, which is enter below for a chance to win your favorite items from luxury monograms. And this war will start dipping our toes into talking about what to give away as a prize. Some people will choose. They'll say, Okay, you can win $75 for site. Okay, Cool. Some people will say you can win a pillow. You can win a napkin, you can win something. I tend to give people the option to choose what they want. So I did something where I said you can. You can win anything off. Our site are most expensive. Product is $250. I was OK with that. If you're selling cars or things, you know, you might want to limit that a little bit. But for us, that was OK so you could win anything you want off of luxury monograms. Here's how toe enter and we talked about This is where a lot of people Pinterest contest. Specifically, I don't know what it is. People have made them so confusing and hard to enter where there's literally six steps and they don't put links or anything. So they have their contest page and they'll say, Oh, make sure to follow us on Pinterest But there's not a link to their page. And so you're like, OK, so sista open other window, type it in Where is there? Okay, there's the Pinter's account that it of all my phone ring, I'm done, you know, you get distracted so something we did follows on Pinterest click here, Link. This was a widget. We plugged in automatically followed us with one click. Simple, streamlined. Never seen you else do that to pin three items off our board that you would like to win. This was a link. We chose to actually have them pin off of a board. We've already made talk about why a little bit earlier, a little bit later, but very specific, very clean link. And then our third component is share this contest by clicking pennant below again. This is another widget. We can talk about how to do this, but when they clicked pin it, it automatically pinned an optimized pin for our contest. I can actually show you that looked just like this that had our Brandon our products, the called action that linked to our contest page. Most people forget this step, and they have people enter. But people never share about the contest. And like I said, the real value and contest is getting people to talk about and share. And so you notice. If you remember, Pinterest guidelines said, do not require people to share the instructions for your contest. Do those like instructions to you? They're not instructions for the contest. It says Click here to enter, but it's not. It's not the pin that saying Pin three things go here and do this sign up for our email list, but that's an instructional pin. But this is still a contest pin that I'm requiring them to be entered in. So I'm getting the benefit now. Even if one person joins my contest, it's at least a couple. People are going to see this contest pen that they've repent. So I think this is critical. I think having something where they're required to promote or share your contest is very, very important. And I understand the idea of contest. Rachel, you brought this up. It can be a little like Well, what if I don't have that many people? What if I don't have that many Pinterest followers? Or what if I at my exposure online isn't massive? How is this going to be successful? Small little winds like this getting each person who enters to share it. So then each other person enters its just exponential exposure. So these are the little strategies that really make a difference and make running a contest worth while even if you're working with a more contained audience and the fourth fill out the form below with your name and your email, the money is in the list. We were talking about that. This is one of the most seamless ways to get people's contact information, and I don't want to come off sounding scam me when I say that. But the truth is, they're they're more open to giving you their contact information because they want to know if they win, right, people will put OK, I'll give you my name and email cause I might win. Then, of course, it makes sense that if I when you need a chance, you need a way to reach out to me, let me know, versus if you have a regular email, find out foreign people might go. I don't know if I really want that e book or E. I don't know. The video series doesn't look bad. Interesting people are more likely to fill out this for a contest. So it's a really good list building strategy. So this is kind of a structure that we chose to go with being able Teoh. 12344 steps still on a little long, but nowhere near is long. The average Pinterest contest were literally I've seen, like, 6 to 8 different steps and it makes it a difference. Having just clicks right here, this is the only thing that is taking them off of this page. I also make sure little subtle things when they click that Make sure that it actually opens a new tab and doesn't take them off of this. You can set that. We know when you're when you're putting that Lincoln on your page. You can choose whether it opens up in a new tab or stays on this page. Make it open in a new tab so they can just go right back to this. So I showed you the contest pin where you saw this actually did have a border, which you can't see in the black background, but it had my black border. I think you saw the example in one of the other boards. It's got our pin it to win it. It got are nice height to get that extra exposure in screen. Real estate also has our logo very kind of mixed into that has our call to action. So you're kind of seen across the board how these strategies are being put into place in different areas, but its colorful It's tall. It's got called actions. These are all the traffic driving, attention grabbing strategies, high quality images again, high quality, not meaning the resolution. But they're pretty, you know, their professional. They make the products look good. You know, I I want to talk about people who sell products online. You know, I think of sometimes like, etc. Sites. I go to a great etc site. They've got really cool stuff, but it might be a picture of a necklace, and it's been shot in the middle of the night, and so it's kind of dark, and maybe the camera wasn't the best. Uneven other stuff is really good. It doesn't look really good. You always want to make sure that you're showcasing your products, that they look amazing. You know, really, really. You're showing them in context of how they would be used. You know, I'm not just showing this particular place mat, but I'm showing what it looks like as an entire experience on the table. Also, ways use images that kind of communicate the vibe of your brands. Luxury monograms is a really fun, youthful, energetic brand, so you can see you've got like candy. It's kind of spilled a little chaotic so that I wouldn't think about all of this stuff. You're contest pen, and this is the pin that is being auto generated when they share it. So this is how to be good. I'm writing on this pin to pull people's attention, to get them to enter and to click through to our site. So for product based businesses, when you're thinking about prices, it's pretty straightforward. What you would offer right you could give away something on your site. Well, I want the worldwide audience. First of all, I want you to think about what you could offer as a prize something as a product. Maybe we talked about. I said you could kind of choose to a certain dollar amount. That's how we did it. But let me know what you could give away as a prize for your site, but also first service businesses. I want to give you an idea, because what I have seen be the most successful for service businesses is to give away a tangible prize. You can absolutely give away your services as a prize, but for some reason, it might be just the framing we have mentally of a of a contest. I've seen that physical prizes work best. So say you're in the fitness industry and you're going well. I could give away free personal training. Consultation? Yes. What? That might be limited by your local area or might be limited by your time. Whether someone wants to come in and do that, all of those air restrictions. But maybe you could give away free three a juice cleanse. Maybe you could give away a great you yoga mat. Maybe you're going to give away a $25 gift card to Lulu Lemon. Something like that. Don't be afraid, Teoh. Choose a physical product to use as your contest prize, even if you sell services. And we were talking again about this earlier that this could be a great way to collaborate now, personally for me, I might just go by the Lululemon card and be done with it. But you could reach out to other people in your industry. Maybe there's a small start up someone like you that's looking to get traction online and say, Hey, I'm going to this contest. I'm gonna put a lot of time energy behind marking it. I love to showcase your brand in your products in exchange for your gonna give the one winner of free juice cleanse or one of your free yoga mats or something like that. So, service providers, I want to hear your examples as well. Hopefully, you're starting to think about that's a little different. What kind offer As a prize beyond just what I offer is a service. I want to hear those suggestions in the chat room. Right now, it's well, and for local businesses is the question. I get a lot of time, a local business and I want to run a Pinterest contest. What should I be offering a surprise? And what I found works really well, if you're a realtor or your anyone that is more locally based is to offer something in your area. So a realtor could give a gift certificate Teoh, a local restaurant. And the way this would look like just to give you a framing for a local business is maybe you want to have people pin listings off of your website. So you got a bunch of listings. You want them to be pins and you're gonna choose one of the winners or choose someone by some criteria that we'll talk about and they get a gift certificate to a spa to a restaurant, something that they can enjoy locally, um, or local specific prize. So do we have any good ideas? I'm sure we dio, but go ahead and shoot out some of the ideas and also in studio audience. If you're going okay thinking about it, what would be a cool prize? Let's hear some of those those prize ideas. All right, so time capsule says service providers could connect with product providers like wedding photographers get give away one of our wedding time capsules so again, that concept of partnership. Yep. Let's see. People are definitely wanting to know what it could be. You know? What if people want ideas, if you're out there and you're going, Mel, I'm just not getting that type in. Tell me what your business is, and I'll help you think of some ideas of your consciousness. Well, wow. This is an interesting one. Diana's murals, huh? She's a muralist. Oh, wow. So maybe also other artists. Yeah. So does she need help Cope with the price? Yeah. Okay, so I'm your little this. I put on this five to really think about it. Anything that could apply also to people who do any kind of, like commissioned now artwork. And that's really going to come back to knowing your audience. Like what they're interested in. If you know, your customers, you know, are within a certain gender or a certain age, you can probably make some assumptions about the type of stuff they're interested in. It could definitely be. You know, maybe the person gets a certain percentage off one of your commissions. That's a good question from murals. Yeah, I've got an idea. So go back to your content. You know, obviously she's an artist, but perhaps she can collaborate with a photographer, has taken a photo of her one of her best murals, and she can give as a gift a framed, limited edition copy of that. Absolutely. Absolutely. Rachel, did you have an idea? Yeah. I was going to say, um, you could do a custom drawing of something that they want you to do so they could hang that in their house and just take maybe two hours and just do a drawing. Love it. Love it. So kind of repurpose ing that art in some different way that people would be interested in images by Sarah says that the muralist could give away and art kit from a local art store. So again, things that are related, Yes. What else are people saying? Let's see a river. Sheena t is suggesting a beautiful gift basket full of goodies from a local boutique. Okay, uh, what else have we here? Let's see. What about for another great user name here from Napa tastic? Who is a baby shower planner? Ah, what could that person give away a planner That could be probably a wedding planner or right? So I was planning. Yes, I think so, baby Shower planner. OK, so someone that specializes in Baby Planet, I would think, What would that customer want? So who's gonna hire a wedding or a baby shower planner? Is it going to be someone who's having a baby? Maybe not always gonna be someone who's throwing the party. I was trying to break it down because what are they really after? What are they interested in? So if they're going to be throwing a baby shower and they're interested in that, maybe they want some cool the core stuff. So maybe they could win. You know, a bunch of really cool decorations for a baby shower? Yeah, racial gift certificate or something for a local cake company together. Custom cake? Absolutely. So thinking about that baby shit of that baby shower. They could get the decorations. They could get a cool gift card to get some really cool cake made for that shower. Maybe there's certain little fun games like there's all those like ridiculous games. You play a baby shower. Maybe there's a bunch of different games and the different items you would need to play those games at the baby shower, just kind of fitting into that theme. All right, all right. I mean, we just have a lot of things coming through. I don't give certificates. People are talking about that as an idea for That's a great question. I personally tend to think like just the ITunes gift card doesn't have the same kind of thing as it used to, because we just see it out there all the time. It's something you can use by default. It does still work, but I think that when it's more specific to something your audience wants and it's mawr tangible again, like a gift card like that, I think a gift card, maybe your site or for one of your products that makes sense is an alignment with your marketing. But, you know, for luxury monograms, if I offered an ITunes gift card to be like, uh, why are you giving I to? So it's going to be an alignment of what you're doing. Like I said, the reason you see it so much is because it is kind of a default thing. It does work, but I think you get a lot more out of thinking of something on that's thoughtful, that your audience is gonna respond. Teoh. Awesome. Yeah, just a lot of collaboration going on here, and Napa Tastic is very grateful for all of the idea. Good, Good. Okay, so that's, you know, that's something. Sometimes it's hard for some people, it's easier for others. But the main thing to focus on it doesn't have to be super expensive. But it should be something thoughtful that you know your audience is going to want now. Selecting your winner. I learned something really interesting when I threw my first contest, and that is that actually contest. If you're throwing a contest, it means that you are selecting a winner based upon a criteria. So it's based upon how whose contest was the most creative or whose contest was the most in line with our brand aesthetic. There's actual criteria. Ah, sweepstakes is when a person is randomly selected. I didn't know that, like I called ours contest when truly reflected a winner randomly. So it should have been a sweet tooth six, just something to know going into it. So a lot of people will do this. They will say, Okay, we're gonna have everyone enter and we will choose one person. Toe win. Now, why do you think that this maybe isn't the most effective way to run a contest? Even though it's the easiest, right? You just put in that random organ, you just choose one person off of a number list. But why is this maybe not the most effective? Any ideas? The reason is it doesn't encourage people to really be active because out of their control, no matter what they create, how good it is, whether or not they share it doesn't matter. Everyone. It's an equal playing field. But what's kind of cool is, if you do run a specific type of contest that is judged by criteria, you could encourage people to share more. You could say something like, All right, the contestant, That's contest pin has the most re pens wins. Now you're a little bit got more skin in the game, right? You can go. Okay. I'm gonna go email my friends service. I'm gonna actually gonna put this on my Facebook page because I know if I put on my page with more people will share it. This can discourage people who go well, I don't have followers. I'm not even enter. But it can also get people to really step up their game and feel more involved and put more time and effort and thought into it. And some contest will actually have a panel were they say we'll pick our favorite Pinterest board that has our content on it and will choose the winner. And then people put more thought and time and effort into it, and then your brand is being framed around more valuable content. So if I were going to do this again, I would do something judged by criteria. If you do have people create a board, so you say all right. To be in this contest, you have to create a luxury monograms board and the board of the most followers. Wen's people would be encouraged to share their board more to talk about it more to try and get their activity, their engagement up higher. And I think it also makes it a more valuable experience for everyone. It's just a little bit more interesting. You can also have your audience vote. I'm a big fan of doing things, activities that bring the community together that get everyone involved so you might run a contest and then selects your favorite three boards or your favorite three. You know, things that were pinned off of your site, something this works more for if there's a creativity format, so you're asking people to create a board around your idea, and then you can put it out to your email issue can put it on your Facebook page. You can put on your Pinterest page and say, All right, it's coming down to Adam and Alexa. What do you guys think? Who should win? People have this, you know. We all want to be engaged in a part of it. And this also all comes back. Teoh tying and Mawr involvement in more excitement and buzz around your contest. There's no use for running a contest if you're not going to make an experience and generate buzz around it. So I love that idea of kind of bring it back to a vote, getting everyone involved in your community, and more people are going to know about your not directly promoting the contest. But if you talk about hey, we're voting on this, more people are gonna be aware of. The contest is going on as well
Class Materials
Ratings and Reviews
a Creativelive Student
What an incredible amount of GREAT information that Melanie gives in this course! I couldn't watch it all live, but I saw enough in about 30 minutes to know I had to have it and so I bought it and it is worth EVERY PENNY! I can't wait to start utilizing all the great info to make my Pinterest boards work for me and have more fun pinning! Thank you CreativeLive and Melanie!
Stamperdog
So glad I saw this and got it to keep. With just a few tweaks, I turned my non-active boards into active boards and quadrupled my followers in just a few days. This spilled over into site traffic AND major lead generation for my mailing list. Thanks for the inspiration, Melanie.
Michelle Smith
Awesome learnt so much thank u