Hi all! In my previous articles about family business in IT, I talked about how we worked long and hard to launch our own service. Now we are actively developing Energoslon, and in this article I want to talk about how our first PR campaign was organized. After the launch of the service and my article on Habré, we received our first clients and a large dose of positivity. However, it was necessary to move on. The service is still very young and little-known. Therefore, we were faced with a task: to increase the recognition of Energoslon.
I have a site, I need an idea
There is a fairly large community of website promotion specialists (SEO specialists) on the Internet, who are the core of our target audience.
There are two main forums where SEOs hang out: searchengines.guru and maultalk.com. At the same time, the attendance of the first forum is higher and amounts to 35-40 thousand users per day. In fact, we based ourselves on this information when choosing a platform for our PR campaign. It so happened that the traditional and already familiar scheme for “bringing an SEO service to people” looks like this:
- A corporate account is purchased on the forum.
- The theme “Meet the new service” is created, all sorts of goodies are offered to users: a free period, bonuses and discounts.
- It pays to pin a topic higher.
Well, then the forum members watch, study, scold, praise.
Over time, the thread turns into a kind of customer feedback channel. The method is good, proven. But somehow he became boring. We wanted to present Energoslon in a more original way, to show that we are positive, cool and customer-oriented. This is how the idea of holding some kind of competition was born, all that remained was to come up with what kind.
Let's hold a lottery?
Since we decided to hold a competition on the forum, it was important to collect as many comments as possible.
After all, the more actively a topic is commented on, the higher it stays in the ranking, the more users see it, the more actively they comment on it... Well, you get the idea. And then I came across an article on Habré “How to make a competition so that more than 2 people participate in it.” In this article, Milfgard talks about the seemingly obvious reason why people don't participate in various competitions. And the reason for this is laziness. The rules of the competition should be so simple and the prizes attractive that even for the laziest person the desire to receive a prize is stronger than the reluctance to do anything for it.
What could be simpler than a lottery? You get a ticket and wait, whether you’re lucky or not. Having learned about the lottery from Mail.ru, in which more than 20 thousand people had already taken part at that time, I realized that laziness can be defeated!
Giveaway: is it worth spending money?
The cost of participation in large giveaways for sponsors often costs tens of thousands of rubles.
What pitfalls lie in wait here?
The most unpleasant moment: some time after the end of the giveaway, those who came to win will begin to unsubscribe from you. Engagement may drop, which will negatively affect the visibility of your posts in the feed.
However, participating in a giveaway is not the worst way to get a critical mass of followers if you have recently created an account.
Calculations, logic and combinatorics
Surely many people watched the program “Russian Lotto” in childhood, we decided to take exactly this principle as the basis for the drawing. Each participant receives a ticket.
Then, live on air, barrels with numbers are pulled out of the bag, participants cross out the numbers on their lottery ticket, and the one with the “combination” wins.
This scheme fit perfectly into the format of the drawing on the forum. After all, users will ask for tickets in the comments, and we will give out these tickets in the comments. This way the topic will always rise in the rankings.
In traditional lotto, there can be multiple winners and the prize pool is shared among everyone. We were giving away prizes, not money. Therefore, each ticket had to be unique.
Besides, I really didn’t want to win a ticket that wasn’t distributed.
So, let's solve a simple math problem
Given:
there are 5 numbers on the ticket.
The combination of numbers in each ticket is unique. The order doesn't matter. There are 90 kegs in a bag. Question:
How many tickets are there in total?
Solution.
The rules of combinatorics tell us that the number of combinations without repetitions of n different elements of m is calculated by the formula:
Those. the number of possible combinations is 90!/(5!85!)=86*87*88*89*90/120. Too much! Accordingly, in order to reduce the number of tickets, you need to either reduce the number of numbers in the ticket or the number of barrels.
Of course, we hoped for the maximum effect, but we understood that it was unlikely that we would be able to distribute more than 500 tickets. Therefore, we decided to play it safe and add barrels as needed. Those. First, we distribute all the tickets that combine 10 numbers of 5. Then we add the 11th barrel. When all possible combinations of 11 numbers have been dealt, add the 12th barrel and so on.
At the same time, we announced to users that no more than 3,003 tickets will be distributed in total. Those. the maximum number of kegs would be 15. Limiting the number of tickets encouraged users to be more active and hurry up to claim their ticket.
As it turned out, the scheme was chosen correctly. We gave away a total of 316 tickets, so there were 11 kegs in the bag for the drawing. Moreover, in 13 days, the message on the forum was viewed almost 20,000 times. SEO specialists learned about Energoslon, which means everything was going according to plan.
The concept of a "prank": a freebie or a clever tool
Since we are serious people, let's start with a definition. A prize draw is a stimulating event designed, first of all, to attract a person’s attention to an event, person, company, etc., and secondly, to the prizes themselves.
If Nikolai Drozdov had defined a prank, he would have given the example of fishing - you throw a fishing rod into a fishing spot, and the fish compete for a tasty morsel.
So let's start with an idea. The first thing you need to do is to correctly define the goal. Why would you like to hold a raffle? Various options:
- to increase sales of your product;
- to increase brand awareness;
- to increase the reach and number of account subscribers.
A correctly set goal is the key to clear and logical conditions, which means maximum efficiency of the draw.
And a few more pitfalls:
- You cannot make a drawing on a zero account . Otherwise, simply no one will participate in it. You need at least a hundred or two live subscribers who will give an impetus to activity, and then you can pump everything up through the target.
- Define your target audience . This point directly depends on the goal. You can play a gift quietly among your subscribers in order to motivate them. Or you can add a distribution element to the competition conditions (for example, reposting in stories), which will help you reach a wider audience and, accordingly, attract “new blood” to your profile.
In general, we talked about the theory of organizing competitions in social networks and all the difficulties associated with this issue in a separate article.
Here we are talking exclusively about Instagram, so here are some ideas on how you can organize a competition on the site of this particular social network. I note that it is not prohibited to combine the listed options with each other depending on the purpose of the drawing:
- Draw using hashtag
Come up with your own thematic hashtag and state in the conditions that in order to participate in the draw you must indicate it in the post. With this technique, you can motivate your subscribers to leave reviews on your profile, post motivational posts, or participate in challenges. A draw using a hashtag in stories is only possible if the competition itself lasts no more than a day from the moment of launch , because it is very difficult to keep track of the flow of participants in stories, and you may miss someone, which will lead to negativity in the future .
- Repost in stories
One of the most common conditions in sweepstakes, which will allow you to reach the audience of subscribers of your participants. Indeed, the action is easy to track - for this, the participant needs to tag you in his repost, otherwise you will not see the fulfillment of the condition. By the way, this is a must, don’t forget! And you, for example, in order to record all stories and marks in them, can send a serial number to the participants in direct messages. This will be convenient when summing up using a randomizer.
- Leave a comment below the post
This condition should be as specific and effective as possible. Again, any condition should benefit you and your profile. Therefore, we forget phrases such as: “Leave any comment” - because comments like “”, which are usually left under such posts, do not carry any semantic meaning, and therefore do not in any way affect the promotion of your competition.
What then to wish for? Here you have many options:
- Tag a friend or friends is a great way to engage your members' followers. When announcing such a condition, be sure to clarify how many friends you can tag and how this affects your chance of winning.
- Predicting the outcome of an event is another interesting way to play a joke. For example, let's say you're a bar and you're hosting a darts tournament. On the eve of the final, you can organize a draw to warm up the fans, and the condition will be to write the results of the final game in the comments. In your drawing, the winner may be the person who first most closely or accurately predicts the outcome of the competition.
- Guess the riddle - in this version the mechanics of determining the winner are the same as in the past. The first one to name the correct answer wins. But anything can be a mystery. For example, if you work in the catering industry, you can offer to guess next week's dish.
- Write your story (history of working with us, review of us), come up with a thematic slogan, continue the phrase or offer a new product - these options are more creative than the previous ones, because the participants will have to make an effort to fulfill these conditions, and you will need to objectively evaluate the efforts each and choose a winner. Try to have at least 2-3 representatives of the company participate in the judging, so the results will be more objective. And, of course, after the competition, publish the scores of each participant you evaluated. Remember that if you ask people to make an effort to participate, you must respect them and not say “you lost!” no arguments.
The mechanics I described above are basic. There can be a lot of ideas, the main thing is a clear understanding of how the participants will fulfill the conditions and how you will summarize the results.
All conditions of the drawing must not be aimed at promoting your account. If this rule is followed, the draw will be as effective as possible.
Choosing a theme and prizes
It’s mid-October, people around are gloomy and sad. As everyone in the office began to get sick in turn, from friends and acquaintances I increasingly heard conversations in the spirit of “how I’m sick of everything!” In general, the surrounding atmosphere gave me the idea to hold a draw under the auspices of “Down with autumn depression!” And choose soft, warm and positive things as prizes. We set the total prize fund at 50 thousand rubles, and 18 prizes were awarded. List of prizes
I paid for some of the prizes in advance to be sure of their availability. I agreed with online stores on delayed delivery, since I could provide the addresses of the winners only after the drawing. I didn’t buy the iPad in advance, assuming that I would then choose an online store that delivered to the region where the winner lived.
By the way, this was the right decision. The main winner was a resident of Ukraine, so it was much easier to buy an iPad in a Ukrainian store. Just 3 days after the drawing, the winner received his long-awaited gift.
Giveaway: is it worth spending money?
The cost of participation in large giveaways for sponsors often costs tens of thousands of rubles.
What pitfalls lie in wait here?
The most unpleasant moment: some time after the end of the giveaway, those who came to win will begin to unsubscribe from you. Engagement may drop, which will negatively affect the visibility of your posts in the feed.
However, participating in a giveaway is not the worst way to get a critical mass of followers if you have recently created an account.
Not everyone uses the services of large organizers who often hold “givas”. Many communities and specialists unite independently to hold a competition. The advantage of such giveaways is that the target audience is sorted much better than in large giveaways.
In this case, gifts are usually provided by sponsors - these can be their services and goods. Sometimes gifts go to all subscribers who leave a comment and subscribe to sponsors' accounts, without any drawing as such.
They usually give collections of tips, instructions, and so on, similar to gifts for subscribing to an email newsletter. There are a lot of such mailings from accounts with children's educational materials and products/services for children and parents.
For example, speech therapists and a child psychologist united in this “giva”:
And here are accounts with ideas for crafts:
Important:
How to organize an online broadcast
The next issue that needed to be resolved was conducting an online broadcast.
Google and its Hangouts helped us here. Hangouts has the ability to broadcast live on YouTube. Moreover, the number of simultaneous viewers of the broadcast is not limited in any way. This is exactly what we needed. Video filming had to be organized in such a way that viewers could see:
- firstly, the leader;
- secondly, a pouch, which should always be in the frame;
- thirdly, the numbers on the barrels.
It became clear that we needed to shoot with two cameras.
To do this, in Hangouts we decided to organize a video conference between two users and switch cameras at the right time. We also needed a microphone so that I could be heard clearly. And a Bluetooth headset to tell me in my ear the names of the winners and other information. So, 4 laptops, two cameras, two microphones, and a Bluetooth headset were simultaneously used in the online broadcast. None of us had experience in holding such events, but I think we did a pretty good job.
Here's a diagram of how everything was organized:
The operator's task was to switch between cameras and display on the screen the numbers of the barrels pulled out of the bag. The director entered the numbers of the barrels into the database, determined the names of the winners and reported them to me. The observer watched the live broadcast on YouTube and chatted with users.
Here's a snippet of the draw:
And here’s what it looked like “from behind the scenes.” I apologize for the quality of the photo, the camera was successfully forgotten at home.
Results
The drawing took place on Friday, November 7th. Not all participants have received the prizes yet, since many winners do not live in Russia. However, the iPad has already found its hero.
I know the main question on your mind is “What is the economic impact of the giveaway?” But it's too early to draw conclusions.
I will give a full report on the numbers in the next article from the series “Family Business in IT”, which, as I previously promised, will be published in a year (now already 11 months). Now I don’t want to disclose any numbers so as not to injure my competitors. What I can say with confidence: the main goal of the draw - to increase the recognition of Energoslon - has been successfully completed.
Links to a description of the rules on the forum and a full recording of the online broadcast
The forum thread where the draw took place. Recording of online broadcast.
And finally, we have prepared a compilation of footage, mainly from rehearsals, so that you understand how we prepared for the broadcast. Positive and good mood to everyone!
