It’s no secret that your event’s social media presence can have a huge influence on your event’s overall success. Running a social media contest in the weeks leading up to show day is a great tactic for both building anticipation and encouraging your followers to share your event with a wider audience of potential ticket buyers. With the short-term video social media takeover, it’s also a fun and low-effort way to get video UGC from your audience. Our experts are here to give you the scoop on four different types of social media contests sure to boost your event’s ticket sales!
Tag, Share, and Follow
Drive social media engagement and build event awareness with a post interaction contest. Instruct your followers to share or tag a friend on a given social post by a certain date and time, and one random lucky winner will be selected to receive an exclusive prize, like a free pair of event tickets or VIP passes! This type of social contest often draws a lot of attention beyond your immediate fan base, so be sure to remind users that they need to follow your account for a chance to win, enabling you to continue marketing to them in the weeks leading up to your event. By tapping into your existing fans’ online friends and followers, you’ll quickly grow your own following and boost interest in your event. For added efficiency and transparency, consider using a randomization service like commentpicker.com to ensure legitimately random results.
Submit Fan Art
Tap into your follower’s creativity and excitement with a fan art contest. To get the ideas flowing and encourage a specific type of submission, provide your followers with a general prompt, allow them to recreate an image related to your event, or even have them submit a t-shirt or poster design! As your event approaches, you can begin to select your finalists internally, then offer your followers another opportunity for engagement by empowering them to choose the winner through a popular vote (which post receives the most likes). As an added bonus, the influx of creative user-generated content is a great source for future organic posts. Plus, having the submissions use a contest-specific hashtag in their social post directs their followers and other prospective ticket buyers to an easy resource to find out more information about your event!
Caption This Post
Encourage your followers to show off their wit and wordplay with a caption contest! Post your event-related meme to your social accounts and encourage your followers to comment with their unique caption for a chance to win free tickets, a VIP upgrade, or other exclusive perks. Plus, encourage further sharing by giving an extra entry to those who tag five or more friends. For a fun twist, entice your fans to participate by having an event guest or performer pick the winning comment! If your event is a music festival, ask one of the headlining artists to personally select the winning comment in a TikTok or Instagram Reels video to add to the fan excitement! Posts with plenty of organic interaction can end up on TikTok’s ‘For You’ page and/or Instagram’s Discover feed, exposing your event to more potential ticket buyers, and therefore driving buzz and overall ticket sales!
Offer a Sweepstakes
Looking for an easier contest option? Sweepstakes require far less effort from both you and your fans, and can help garner just as much attention. Use a submission form to offer a sweepstakes contest where a random submission can win some sweet prizes, and make it more exciting by running multiple sweepstakes as a way to countdown to your event. Each sweepstakes prize can increase in worth as you near closer to your event to incentivize fans to participate. Encourage your entrants to showcase that they entered on social media, either through a prize reveal video on TikTok or Instagram, so after your winner is chosen you have access to a new target audience and future potential ticket buyers!
Of course, before running any contest or giveaway, always be sure to confirm the rules and regulations for running contests in your jurisdiction and on each social media platform! Take a look at Instagram’s Promotion Guidelines for example.