10 Tools for Small Businesses to Run Online Social Contests, Competitions and Promotions

Running contests and involving your users has the ability to attract new audience to your site and your social media accounts. A lot of social media managers, provide giveaways in order to increase the number of shares, and expand the brand. Simply put, they create contests as part of viral marketing. Now coding such social contests is not for everyone since it needs lot of time and effort but there are certain tools and websites which allow you to create them.

Here are 10 useful tools that can help you in running your online contest, competitions and promotions. You can suggest more such tools in comments and I will put it in the blog post.

1. Rafflecopter -  Rafflecopter is one of the largest site to run social giveaways and competitions. You have two options either you go for the $7.99 or the $59.99 monthly package.  Users have control on conducting the polls/surveys, prize photo slide show, not to mention get 24 hour support from Rafflecopter. You can check out their demo to understand how it works. 

2. Shortstack - Shortstack allows you to maximize your social media presence in a dash. What Shortstack does is to create a number of promotions that can be placed on your Facebook page. From photo contests to video contests, Shortstack allows you to create, and manage the promotion smoothly. 

3. BlazonApp - Blazon Social or Blazon App provides professional online contests that you can run on your social media page. They provide responsive promotion that you can be exported to Facebook. This site allows you to maximize your campaign and only have to pay less than a dollar a day. 

4. Wizehive - Wizehive is among the most widely used tools when running a contest on Facebook. Whether you are going to engage with your audience through photo contests or even essays, Wizehive can handle such. Among the companies that already utilized this tool are Marriot, Toyota and NBC to name a few. 

5. Strutta - Strutta is a powerful tool that allows you to get your brand’s authority where you want it. It provides assistance not only for contests, but also on sweepstakes. Strutta allows you to use customize the CSS and get in depth analytics. 

6. Cub.io - Cub.io is a great tool that you can use in order to incentivize your audience. It works by providing additional entries per recommendation given by a participant. This works on the premise that contests are effective when they are viral. 

7. Photo Scramble - There are a lot of companies today running photo contests for their audience. Photo Scramble is a site that allows businesses and organizations to run their contests easy.  All you need to do is to write the description, the date of the competition and the rules and eligibility. 

8. North Social - North Social is one of the leading social marketing platforms used by Sony Music, Gold’s Gym, Reef and Hyatt to name a few. They provide some of the best promotion to the big companies out there. They provide promos that users can only gain access once they like the Facebook page. This provides a logical step towards those social media pages looking to increase their audience. 

9. Votigo - Votigo, is yet another effective tool that you can use to increase your brand’s traction to the market. They run promotion not only on Facebook, but also on Twitter both on web and mobile platforms. GoPro, Fujifilm, Starwood and iVillage are some of the brands that made use of this powerful tool to engage with their audience. 

10. Competizer - Competitzer is one of the best user friendly tools used to create both photo and online writing competition. It manages both competitions done on Facebook and on the website. Also, they can also provide a mobile friendly version to users. What makes this tool different is the fact that you get to have it for free for up to 25 entries. .