One of the best ways to keep the interest of your customers in your Facebook page is through contests, events or deals. We all know that the most common and attractive word that attracts people these days is ‘Free’. Yes, and the more engaged your people are, the more they will keep coming back to you. There are a lot of ways to increase fan engagement for your brand, but where Facebook contests are concerned, these have been a great success provider to every brand which has tried it.

So next time you think of engaging with your fan base you can stick to simply tweeting, connecting on Facebook, replying and posting things or you can decide to step up and engage your fans through Facebook contests.

In a nutshell, Facebook contests:

• – Increase the likes of your page
• – Lead to higher engagement
• – Increase the Edgerank of the Facebook page

Once you have planned to go ahead with this idea of adding a silver lining to your presence on Facebook get a clear understanding of your audience first. In order to resonate with them, find out what they are talking about, what they do on Facebook or what they clicked.

Deals on Facebook

Well, guess you already own a brand page and there are customers across who love your brand too. But how do you excite them? What about the deals? Yes of course, the Facebook deals. Obviously brand managers would have tried it on their brand’s Facebook page. But, did you try something extraordinary to grab all the eyeballs to your brand on Facebook? Its simple and yet very effective. What you could offer for the real time engagement is maybe a free download of your eBook, a discount shopping coupon, some audio or video downloads or simply an access to exclusive area or location for only members.

Something interesting like a fan-only reveal code offered by brands is one of the best and most effective deals on Facebook. It involves rewarding fans for ‘liking’ a brand page and where brands can offer something exciting in return. Quick tip for a quick start: To start or set up a Deal, just click ‘edit page’ box in the top right corner of your brand’s Facebook page and then click ‘Deals’ in the list of tabs on the left. Even discount codes or coupons can be used to drive the traffic on Facebook to your brand’s website in order to let them know more about your latest offers and services.

ITC Hotels has frequent offers for its fans on Facebook.

Facebook Contests

With almost an array of engagement activities happening on Facebook by brands across the globe, another thing which is at peak is Contests.

Executing contests on Facebook is one of the powerful ways to increase & spread brand awareness and create an overall buzz. Not only this, the long term benefit is the customer loyalty that is built through customer recognitions and gratifications. A generic contest by a brand might include trivia questions about the industry/market, submitting designs or anything related to art, inviting opinions about the product or maybe just posting pictures and asking fans to guess, name or caption it.  However, Facebook does enforce certain rules for the same but contests do hold credibility for the entire brand that goes ahead with it. A contest cannot be made conditional on just posting a comment, photo, a status update or maybe just by liking a wall post. Omron India also held a Facebook contest ‘Inspiring Tomorrow’ to promote the spirit associated with the Bollywood film ‘Bhaag Milkha Bhaag’.

Facebook Events

It is indeed a great way to grow or increase attendance and reach new audiences. Are you as a brand thinking of planning a life or a sale event? Then its very essential to know that events can be set up in three ways: Open, Closed & Secret.

• Open events can be seen and RSVP’d by everyone. These Events can be entertainment events, sales or grand openings.
• Closed events can be seen by everyone, the details also can be viewed by everyone but only the guests who are invited can do RSVP to that particular event. For example, entertainment, fans-only sales, classes etc.
• Secret Events are only visible to the guests that are invited and are not visible to anybody else. Not even RSVP ones. These events are mostly employee training events or meet-ups.

When brands set up an event, the event gets its own wall. What is important is to turn on the event wall for all as the guests would want to comment on the event, share, express their excitement about the same and even ask questions etc. Gaining fans through events is a great advantage. To increase the brand awareness, closed events can be used more effectively, wherein those invited are allowed to invite their friends too. A lot of fans invite their friends leading to more engagement.

Quick tip for a quick start: To establish an Event, click ‘edit page’ box in the top right corner page & click ‘apps’ in the list of tabs on the left. You will see ‘events’ in the list. Then click ‘go to app’ and create an event.

Here’s an example of a Facebook Event by ITC Classmate that garnered a lot of people to the page and was appreciated by the masses.

Sources: mashable.com, allfacebook.com, socialmediaexaminer.com, pagemodo, socialized.me

Contests, we bet have always been and will be enticing a lot of fans to your page through conversations and feedback. With a simple understanding of what your fans identify with, responding them and gratifying them you will end them waiting to hear from you again. So, are you ready to tap this amazing tool to drive traffic to your page? Share your thoughts.