Will we penalized for using social media contests to gain fans/followers in the future?
-
To help build up my company's website, we've been making a huge push in social media and to gain followers on our social pages, we've recently been running a couple of contests. So far it's been a great success - more traffic to the social media pages and more traffic to the website. We are considering making the contests a regular part of our social media & SEO strategy. In the past, our social media strategy has relied completely on "organic" likes (no incentives to follow our company's page) and posted content articles, pictures, etc. In the past month or so, we've began to use giveaway contests as a way to gain followers. Since focusing more on running contests, we've seen a huge increase in actively on our social media pages. We've continued to regularly post content articles, interesting pictures, etc, during the contests, but haven't see the same level of engagement that we do with the contest posts. Right now, it's looking like there is no down-side to running the contests as we're seeing an increase in traffic on the social pages, getting some additional traffic to posts and on our site, but before we start to completely commit to this strategy, I have a couple of questions:
- Is there a reason we shouldn't continue to run these contest to increase fans and interaction?
- How likely is it that Google will penalize us in the future for gaining followers through contests (instead of "organic" followers that followed us without an incentive)?
- There are some fans/followers that are serial contest entrants and are always entering a contest - could having too many of these fans raise a red flag for Google and the other search engines?
- How often is too often to be running a social media contest?
Basically, I want to make sure that we are using social media as a long term SEO tool and are setting ourselves up to be successful in the future and not get penalized for gaining followers the wrong way. Any tips, strategies or advice is very much appreciated.
Thank you!
-
AirnWater,
I doubt you will be penalized. You have to remember that the majority of Facebook is still closed off to Google and it's Spiders, so how would it be able to penalize your fanpage? Facebook is still far away from ever letting Google completely crawl it, so it won't be able to see your individual posts.
To answer your other question about the contest overall, I would ask what is your mission statement for the contest and what are you doing? If a client simply asked you to gain fans to their Facebook page, I see no problem in doing this, but if you're trying to drive sales this is completely different. I will like a Soap page for free soap, but that doesn't mean that their content will be attractive to me. I simply wanted the free soap. You have me for free soap and not for the engagement, you have to be careful here now because fans might expect free things from you all the time.
If you still want to continue a contest to increase your fan count though, I don't see why you couldn't hold one every two months. That's enough time to increase your fan count, while not being a complete saleout.
To get engagement, your money might be better suited elsewhere, in this case(maybe PPC). I would also work on more fill in the blank posts on Facebook or like posts, to increase edgerank.
-
Thanks for your response. We actually are using woobox to host our contests and are very careful to follow each sites rules about contests, so that isn't an issue for us - my question has more to do with the strategy of gaining followers. Do you have any thoughts on the other questions I listed?
- Is there a reason we shouldn't continue to run these contest to increase fans and interaction?
- How likely is it that Google will penalize us in the future for gaining followers through contests (instead of "organic" followers that followed us without an incentive)? There are some fans/followers that are serial contest entrants and are always entering a contest - could having too many of these fans raise a red flag for Google and the other search engines?
- How often is too often to be running a social media contest?
-
Contests can and should be a big part of your social media strategy....especially if it is working well....
There are a few things you want to make sure you are aware of..... For example with facebook you arent allowed to notify winners of your contest through Facebook. You also arent allowed to use Facebook features as a voting mechanism. And you arent suppose to use liking or commenting on a post or uploading a photo to your Timeline as a entry to a contest. To read the full list of rules and regulations on facebook, see the details here.... http://www.facebook.com/page_guidelines.php
Twitter rules are a little less restrictive. Here they are..... https://support.twitter.com/articles/18311-the-twitter-rules.
Pinterest has nor rules... but they do have an etiquette guide. here it is.... http://pinterest.com/about/etiquette/
What we do to get around some of facebooks rules and to provide an easy way to handle and track the contest is use third party apps. We use woobox and shortstack.......
Hope this helps.
Mark
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
No employees so will a search engine optimisation company work me?
I'm self-employed and run two different companies solely by myself there is no employees but I contacted the two UK SEO companies which are recommended on Moz both of them based in London, but after sending them emails and speaking to them on the phone neither contacted me about they must think I'm too small. Do you find that small one-man band companies find it hard to get a SEO to work for them because my budget will be too small? The company I would like to improve the rankings on is a Whitby Holidat Cottages letting agency in Whitby www.EndeavourCottge.co.uk with 10 properties, so obviously I can't afford a large budget but I could happily afford a monthly subscription if they could do necessary works for me do you think this sounds feasible? Or am I better just continuing and trying to make the time to do the work myself even I'm not that expertise. What is your thoughts and experience? Thank you Alan Davidson
Social Media | | alandavidson1 -
Social Trending
Hey, Just wondering what tools people recommend for finding out trending content on social media? Thanks
Social Media | | wearehappymedia1 -
Why isn't SEOMoz using Wistia's social sharing feautes?
I noticed that SEOMoz does not make use of Wistia's social sharing buttons such as a Facebook Like button. Is there any disadvantage to using the like button via Wistia rather than copy/pasting it in static HTML?
Social Media | | TheDude0 -
Facebook Shares/Likes: Does the users location matter for location specific keywords?
Hi, Basically if I was going after a location specific keyword, so lets say 'dry cleaners london' would Facebook likes/shares from users' who's location settings in Facebook are set to London work better then say someone in a different country or does it hold the same weight social signals wise?
Social Media | | activitysuper0 -
Is using a platform to automatically cross post on the social media networks good for SEO?
Is cross posting automatically on the multiple social media networks good for SEO or bad?
Social Media | | Melia0 -
1.5m pageviews / 400k uniques. What are we missing though?
We have built up our site to 1.5m pageviews / 400k uniques per month. But I am sure there are a ton of things that we aren't doing correctly. Please take a look at DenimBlog.com and let me know if there is anything we can do to improve the site. We would love to figure out a way to get to 2m pageviews. Also we would love to have you take a look and check out our google analytics. You can see our 3 years of great data and see if you see anything we aren't capitalizing on. Just drop me your analytics gmail account and I'll add you. Ywo13.png
Social Media | | denimblog0 -
What are your top 3 social bookmarking and social networking sites for Ecommerce?
I am trying to figure out the best social bookmarking and social networking sites to use for my eCommerce sites. Often in the social bookmarking platforms posting a review or a product is instantly considered spam. I know that having links from these types of sites are important but I don't want to come across as spam. What creative solutions do you use for this challenge?
Social Media | | purch0 -
So I am my coworker have a differing opinion on social networking sites.
One of us says to join one or two, Linkedin being one of them and just work those. The other says to build profiles on multiple pages - everything from Merchant Circle to fastpitch , essentially any and all, and not worry about activity level, just get the link. What are your thoughts? Which approve will result in more effective optimization for clients?
Social Media | | belocally0