Social media contests and giveaways is the new trend when it comes to engaging your audience on different social networks. However, ideating, designing, and executing effective contests for your target audience on social media channels can be a little overwhelming.
Investing in advanced social media online contest tools can significantly prove to be a beneficial decision for your business as it efficiently manages all your social media campaigns with automation. This also helps in maximizing your brand awareness, revenues, and productivity.
In this article, I have listed the eight best social media contest tools that allow you to save your time, effort, and resources by crafting and designing eye-grabbing contests and campaigns to lure your target audience.
Let’s begin!
Top 8 Social Media Contest Tools For Enhanced Audience Engagement
Here is a list of advanced tools that helps marketers and businesses scale their brand while maximizing engagement on various social media networks:
1- Rafflecopter
Pricing: Starts free. The paid plans start at $13 and go up to $84 per month.
Rafflecopter is one of the social media contest platforms that allows you to create and manage online giveaways, contests, and promotions. It’s designed to run engaging campaigns on various social media platforms and websites.
The tool is trusted by leading companies, including Hallmark, Yelp, Intel, The Boston Globe, and Texas Instruments, for its exceptional features like unlimited giveaways, embeddable entry forms, entrant data export, and form designing.
Related: 12 Best Social Media Engagement Tools For Insane Growth
Key Features:
- Multi-platform integration
- Unlimited giveaway options
- 1-click random winner declaration
- Real-time analytics suite
- World-class customer support
2- WooBox
Pricing: Starts free. The paid plans start at $32 and go up to $249 per month.
WooBox is one of the top social media contest tools that offers various options to create giveaways, contests, polls, and quizzes to boost your brand engagement. From landing pages to popups to embeds, the tool offers assistance to provide a seamless experience to your target audience.
Founded in 2010, WooBox is used by leading companies, including American Airlines, Fossil, Spotify, MSC Cruises, Hearst, and NFT, to enhance their customer experiences, social media engagement, and marketing returns.
Key Features:
- Pre-designed contest templates
- Easy participation management
- Seamless device and platform integration
- Landing page generation
- Overall contest management
3- ShortStack
Pricing: Paid plan starts at $79 and goes up to $199/mo per month.
ShortStack is a leading social media contest creation and management tool that helps improve your company’s lead generation, engagement, user-generated content, and coupon distribution by leveraging its top-notch features. It assists in launching various events, including contests, games, and quizzes.
The tool is best suited for various industries, including ecommerce, events, financial institutions, healthcare, real estate, hospitality, and beauty.
In 10 years, ShortStack has served over 8000 clients, including Netflix, Tootsie, AMC Networks, Camp Chef, UFC, and PetSmart, to strengthen their social media engagement while boosting their returns.
Key Features:
- Flexible publishing
- Effective landing page creation
- Pre-designed templates
- Seamless entry moderation
- Time-saving coupon distribution
4- SocialMan
Pricing: Starts free. The paid plan starts at $12 and goes up to $30 per month.
Socialman is a leading social media management and contest tool that allows you to launch and run successful giveaways and live poll contests on over 12 platforms. The tool runs attractive campaigns while maximizing brand awareness, sales, exposure, traffic, engagement, and conversions.
Related: 10 Best Social Media Calendar Tools To Pump Up Your Growth
Key Features:
- Multi-platform integration
- Easy setup
- Unlimited giveaways, actions, and participants
- Multilingual giveaway service
5- WishPond
Pricing: Starts with a free trial. The paid plan is available in consultation.
Wishpond is a marketing automation and lead generation platform. It provides tools for creating and managing various online marketing campaigns, including landing pages, contests, pop-ups, forms, email marketing, and social media campaigns.
They help scale all kinds of brands from SMBs and Fortune 500, while their clientele includes leading companies like Walmart, Lululemon, The Weather Network, CBS, and ESPN. Additionally, the tool serves various industries, including ecommerce, fitness, hospitality, marketing agency, education, and B2B.
Key Features:
- 12+ contest types
- Transparent analysis and reporting
- Referral Suite
6- EasyPromos
Pricing: The paid plans start at $29 and go up to $399 per month if billed annually.
EasyPromos is a leading social media contest platform that has various tools for creating and managing promotions, contests, and giveaways on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter for better engagement, customer loyalty, and business growth.
The tool has created over 2 million promotional campaigns for various clients, including Black+Decker, Iberia, Movistar, and Rogers Sports & Media. EasyPromos specializes in designing different formats, including giveaways, contests, quizzes, games, and multi-stage.
Key Features:
- Fraud control system
- 12-hour live support
- 44+ Promotional templates
Related: Top 25 AI Automation Marketing Tools In 2023
7- Gleam
Pricing: Paid plans start at $97/mo.
Gleam is one of the best social media contest platforms that offer a wide range of tools and features for running contests, giveaways, and other promotional activities on different social media channels.
The tool is best suited for businesses, influencers, and marketers to engage their audience, increase brand awareness, and drive user interaction. In its diversified list of clients, Gleam has some of the top companies, including Trivago, Lootcrate, Shopify, Sitepoint, and HubSpot.
It offers various templates, including refer-a-friend, online store promotion, YouTube giveaways, scavenger hunts, pre-launch awareness, and survey contests to create social media challenges for your brand.
Key Features:
- Built-in viral sharing
- Embedded contests
- One-click entry
- Smart notification emails
- Fraud protection
- Easy winner picks
8- Walls.io
Pricing: Starts at $23 and goes up to $200 per month if billed annually.
Walls.io is one of the leading social media contest tools that create engaging and luring contests for all your social networks aligning with your business growth and goals. They offer a variety of social media contest creation, including voting-based and interactive challenges, while allowing you to track likes, comments, and shares of the posts in real time.
The tool is best suited for various industries, including agencies, ecommerce, education, finance, healthcare, government, retail, and tourism. In addition to this, Wall.io is trusted by leading companies, including Helvetia, VMware, Twitch, Boston University, and IMO.
Key Features:
- Live polls
- Customized designing
- Real-time engagement tracking
- Social media aggregation
- Post sponsoring
- Virtual photo booth
- WordPress social feed plugin
Related: Top 12 AI Presentation Tools To Enhance Your Marketing
How To Choose The Best Online Social Media Contest Tool For Your Business?
Here is how you can select the best-suited social media contest tools for your business growth:
Define Your Goals and Needs
Identify your primary goals, whether you are aiming to increase brand awareness, drive traffic, boost engagement, or something else. Determine your content types: Will you focus on images, videos, articles, infographics, or a mix of formats? Consider your team’s size and roles: How many team members will use the tool, and what are their responsibilities?
Assess Platform Compatibility
Ensure the tool supports the social media platforms you intend to use, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
Look For Automation Features Like Content Scheduling and Publishing
Look for tools that allow you to schedule and automate content posting across multiple platforms. Check if the tool offers features like content queues, posting calendars, and the ability to set specific posting times.
Find Out If The Tool Offers Content Creation and Editing
Evaluate whether the tool includes features for creating or editing visuals, videos, or graphics. Consider tools that offer templates, stock images, and design customization options.
Check Content Curation Feature
Determine if the tool provides content discovery and curation capabilities to find relevant articles, news, and user-generated content.
Evaluate Analytics and Reporting Options
Check if the tool offers comprehensive analytics to track post performance, engagement metrics, follower growth, and more. Ensure the reporting features align with the data you need to measure your social media efforts.
Determine User Interface and Ease of Use
Choose a tool with a user-friendly interface that aligns with your team’s technical expertise. Evaluate whether the tool offers an easily accessible navigation dashboard and provides a clear overview of your social media activities.
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Think About Collaboration and Team Management
If you have a team, look for tools that allow multiple users to collaborate, assign tasks, and manage content creation and approval workflows.
Check Integration with Existing Tools
Check if the tool integrates with your existing marketing or CRM tools to streamline workflows and data sharing.
Evaluate Budget and Pricing
Determine your budget and remember whether the tool’s pricing aligns with your business goals. Compare the capabilities of different pricing plans to identify the best alternatives for maximized returns.
Check Customer Support and Training
Look for tools that provide customer support, training resources, and tutorials to help you make the most of the platform.
See Trial Period and User Reviews
Take advantage of free trials or demos to test the tool’s functionality and see if it meets your expectations. Read user reviews and testimonials to gain insights into other businesses’ experiences with the tool.
Determine Scalability
Consider whether the tool can accommodate your business’s growth in terms of content volume, team size, and social media channels.
Related FAQs
1- What are social media contest tools?
Social media contest tools are software platforms designed to help businesses and marketers create, manage, and run various types of contests, giveaways, and promotions on social media platforms. These tools provide a range of features to simplify the process of organizing and executing engaging campaigns that encourage audience participation and interaction.
2- What are the features to look for in a social media contest tool?
Here are the top features to look for when you plan to invest in a social media contest tool:
- Entry methods: Look for tools that offer various entry options, such as social follows, sharing, commenting, and user-generated content submission.
- Viral sharing: Choose tools with built-in features that encourage participants to share the contest with their friends and followers.
- Customization: Ensure the tool allows you to customize the content design to match your brand’s look and feel.
- Data collection: Check if the tool enables you to collect participant data like email addresses for future marketing efforts.
- Moderation: Look for tools that let you moderate entries to ensure compliance with rules and guidelines.
- Random winner selection: Ensure the tool offers a fair way to choose winners, often through random selection mechanisms.
- Analytics and reporting: Choose a tool that provides insights into participant engagement, reach, and other metrics.
- Integration: Check if the tool can be integrated with your existing marketing and CRM platforms.
3- How are winners selected in social media contest tools?
Many tools offer random winner selection mechanisms to ensure fairness. Some tools may allow you to manually choose winners, while others use algorithms to select winners from the pool of eligible participants randomly.
Time To Choose The Best Social Media Contest Tool
Social media management can be overwhelming for busy brand owners as there are various platforms and tasks to manage in order to in the mind of your target audience.
While plenty of tools are available for your social media management and scheduling, there are also numerous software to launch campaigns, contests, and giveaways to maximize your brand’s engagement, ROI, and awareness.
The top social media contest listed in this article ranks among the highest and offers high-tech features. Assess them closely to drive maximum returns, traffic, and conversions for your brand.
