Games on social networks. Or 11 tips for creating game content

What is game content?

Gaming content is building two-way interaction between subscribers and the company, i.e. creating mechanisms and tools that can cause a backlash from subscribers. Users begin to comment and like posts, repost, etc. Posts begin to rise in the news rankings on social networks. The content goes viral, and inactive subscribers and new users begin to engage in the community.

Why are competitions held on social networks?

Whether we like it or not, competitions on pages are an integral part of promotion. There are many reasons why it is important to remember to conduct activities on the page:

• Attracting new subscribers.
• Introducing a new product to the market.
• Generate interest in your product or service.
• The maximum virality of such content, i.e. rapid dissemination of information about your brand without attracting additional budget, but only due to the excitement of subscribers around the competition.
• Brand loyalty is formed. An organizer who honestly fulfills all the conditions of the competition will undoubtedly increase his status in the eyes of subscribers, increasing trust in his brand. Users who are left without prizes will definitely try their luck in your next competition and again “bring up” new subscribers.

There are two types of competitions:

• with the selection of the winner using a random number generator (Giveaway);
• with the choice of the winner manually (by the organizer himself) or through voting between participants.

Let's consider competition ideas for the 3 most popular social networks in Russia.

Types of gaming content: top 10 ideas for competitions and games with subscribers:

Screenshot prediction

The goal is to get a reaction from the audience in the form of a like or comment.

Gaining popularity on social networks. The essence of the competition is that the subscriber needs to take a screenshot and post it in the comments under the post. Predictions must be positive so as not to upset subscribers. For example, you can offer a game: “How will you spend today?”

Pros:

• a simple way to increase user activity;
• the rating in the community increases and the coverage of a particular post increases.

Minuses:

• complexity of creation: you need to come up with several pictures, write text on each and edit it either into a video or GIF format;
• They can use the prediction, but they cannot post the screenshot in the comments.

Tools:

• FastGIF;
• toolson.net;
• Giphay.

An example of a screenshot prediction from the Pizzeria Network: Dodo Pizza.

Quiz

The goal of the game is maximum engagement and retention.

The audience is interested in reading not only about the company, but also about themselves. It's good when a company publishes news, information about products and services. But sometimes it's not interesting to read.

Quiz - these are tests and quizzes that you have seen more than once on websites and social networks - will make the group more lively. They are aimed at people's desire to know themselves better. Well, which of us refused to take some interesting test, for example, “What animal are you?”, “What literary character would you become”?

Pros:

• you can unobtrusively ask clients for data through the game;
• interest in the group increases;
• user loyalty increases;
• community coverage is growing.

Minuses:

• a random user will visit the page, play and leave;
• provides temporary activity for communities. A solution could be to introduce it as a regular column and conduct it once a month.

Tools:

• Marquiz;
• Envybox;
• Flexbe;
• Enquiz;
• Chatbots (for example, SMMbro, Flow XO and Smartbot).

Alfa-Bank offers to take a quiz: “Earn your first million.”

Activity competition

The goal is to increase activity in the group and encourage users to like and leave comments and reviews.

Create a charging system for user actions. This is simple gamification that will significantly increase social media activity. Motivate people to play, give them the opportunity to monitor their progress: place active users in the header of social networks.

Pros:

• receiving feedback from users;
• increased activity in the community;
• coverage increases.

Minuses:

• low costs for prizes and gifts;
• as soon as the competition ends, activity in the group decreases, since users will lose incentive;
• the appearance of spammers.

Tools:

• Dynamic covers dycover.ru and letscover;
• GetViral;
• Parsers Cerebro, Target Cultivator and others.

The children's store Carnival-K in Ukhta holds an activity competition twice a month.

Repost

The goal is to quickly attract subscribers to the community.

Users are invited to win a prize for reposting. And the winner is determined using a randomizer - the application randomly selects the lucky one.

Pros:

• the coverage increases like an avalanche, as the people who reposted are watched by friends, acquaintances and relatives;
• fast recruitment of subscribers;
• brand loyalty increases.

Minuses:

• the presence of freeloaders who are not interested in the community. Their main goal is to win anything;
• people refuse to participate due to unclear conditions of the competition;
• reposts repel users because they spoil the appearance of a personal page;
• to maintain activity, it is necessary to constantly support this competition format;
• you need to offer a worthy gift so that people will repost.

Tools:

• Random.org;
• rundstuff.ru;
• Random.up;
• Luck you.

Simple conditions of the competition from the PROFI+ company

Quest

The goal is to attract new users and increase the activity of old users.

Engage and intrigue users with interesting tasks. This type of gaming content distinguishes the community from a large number of similar communities and publics.

Creating a quest is a labor-intensive undertaking. But subscribers will enjoy the game, and will tell their friends and acquaintances about their impressions.

Pros:

• increasing activity in the community;
• user loyalty increases;
• new subscribers are attracted;
• company recognition increases;
• receiving feedback.

Minuses:

• you need to spend a lot of time creating quests;
• users will refuse to play if the quest is difficult.

Tools:

• surpriseme.ru;
• activebot.ru;
• letscover;
• Chatbots (for example, Robochat.io, ArtSend, Chatgun, etc.).

The SKAT company hid 100*100 cells in a field. And subscribers need to guess the cell. Very original

Review competitions

The goal is to motivate users to leave reviews.

A simple way to find out what users think about the company's products. As a result, the number of subscribers grows and positive reviews about the company (SERM) are formed.

Pros:

• receiving feedback from subscribers;
• knowledge of what users like and dislike;
• increasing activity in the community.

Minuses:

• the possibility of spammers appearing;
• biased reviews from dissatisfied subscribers;
• psychological barriers of users: they are embarrassed to leave reviews, etc.

Mechanics:

1. Selection of reviews in several stages.
2. First, the best reviews are selected based on likes.
3. Viewer voting.
4. The community team selects the best review.

The user with the best review will win a laptop and monitor.

Photo-video competition

The goal is to engage users and increase activity through native advertising of subscribers on their personal page.

Unleash your followers' creativity. Such a competition can be done on any topic, even better if it is related to the group and its products.

Pros:

• interesting content ideas from subscribers;
• increasing the company's popularity;
• increasing user activity.

Minuses:

• biased assessment of the participants’ work, since everyone has different tastes, the likelihood of receiving negative comments about the company;
• gifts are needed to encourage users to participate;
• The competition can be won by users who have not subscribed to the community.

Mechanics:

1. A record is created on the social network that a photo-video competition is going on, and the dates are specified.
2. Pin the post on the wall so that new users can see it when they enter the community.
3. Come up with a unique hashtag that will be used to search for the participants’ work.
4. The organizers check and select the best stories.
5. The 10 best photos or videos are posted in the community.
6. The best photo is selected by polling users.
7. In a separate post we would like to thank all the participants of the competition.
8. If you don't want to spend money on a gift, you can offer users a discount or points. This is what coffee shop owners often do: Take a photo, get a discount.

Take a photo, get prizes from SKODA.

The best story

The goal is to motivate subscribers to be active.

Invite your subscribers to write a cool and interesting story. At the end of the competition, thank everyone for their beautiful stories.

Pros:

• increasing the number of subscribers;
• increasing user loyalty;
• the opportunity to receive interesting content for the community.

Minuses:

• biased assessment of work by administrators;
• We need a prize to motivate users to write.

Mechanics:

1. A post is created on the social network that there is a competition going on, where you need to come up with the best story, and also specify the timing.
2. Pin the post on the wall so that new users can see it when they enter the community.
3. Write an email where participants will send their work.
4. The organizers check and select the best stories.
5. The 10 best stories are posted in the community.
6. One best story is selected by user voting.

Competition from MTS: the user of the best story will receive a red smartphone.

Thematic survey

The goal is to increase engagement and stimulate discussion among participants.

Want to know how well your audience knows your brand? Conduct a survey and reward the most loyal fan!

For example, a bookstore might run a survey on the Harry Potter books. The main thing is to make sure that the questions you prepare are interesting to your audience and relevant to your brand.

Pros:

• identifying audience expectations and needs;
• involving new users;
• increasing company awareness and subscriber loyalty;
• a large number of tools for creating tests.

Minuses:

• has short-term success;
• the difficulty of creating thematic tests;
• the audience is not always interested;
• users will refuse to play if the test is difficult.

Tools:

• Chameleonus;
• Survey Planet;
• Play Buzz;
• Class Marker;
• Application Tests for VK.

How well do you know the world of Game of Thrones?

10. Riddle

The goal is to get subscribers talking and increase activity in the group.

Ask your followers a question and ask them to post the answer in the comments. Such competitions usually quickly attract attention.

Give a reward to the first person to solve the riddle, or choose a winner from all the participants who answered correctly.

Pros:

• interest in the post increases, which may increase the number of fans;
• if the riddle is complex, and users discuss heatedly in the comments, then the activity of the group will greatly increase;
• coverage increases.

Minuses:

• if the riddle is not interesting and, in addition, too difficult, then users will refuse to participate;
• it is necessary to stir up the interest of subscribers in the community with new riddles;
• high activity is a temporary phenomenon.

Mechanics:

1. In special editors, for example Photoshop, Crello or Canva, we come up with a picture on which we write a riddle text.
2. We upload the resulting picture into a post, which we pin in the community.
3. We are waiting to see who will guess the riddle first.

Barrymore Restaurant offers "Sir Barrymore's Deduction"

Moment games

The goal is to increase user activity in the community.

No less interesting content than other predecessors, when subscribers are invited to continue the story or suggest associations. For example, look at the avatar of the previous commentator and what images it evokes. You can also play a game where you need to choose an interlocutor and ask him a question, that is, introduce users to each other.

Pros:

• user activity increases;
• the coverage of the post increases;
• there are many fans of the game.

Minuses:

• psychological barriers of participants: they will be embarrassed to participate in this type of competition.

Mechanics:

1. A little creativity and desire to make a cool post.
2. Using special editors, such as Photoshop, Crello or Canva, we come up with an interesting picture and funny text for the post.
3. We upload the resulting picture into a post, which we pin in the community.
4. We are happy for happy users.

Ward No. 6 introduces users to each other.

Ideas for competitions on Instagram

Selfie with product

Participants take a photo with a product from your brand (or against the background of your store/salon) and post it on Instagram, not forgetting to mention information about the product and the competition itself in the hashtag. This is great advertising for a brand, although not everyone is ready to take a selfie with, say, a toilet, so not every product is suitable for this type of competition.

Product photo + story about it

Who can best tell you about your product? That's right - your clients! So ask them about it and reward them generously for the most exciting story. The competition is suitable for advertising products that have already been introduced to the market and are in demand.

Original photo

“Take the most unusual photo with our product and get a prize for it!” Just don’t forget to set some boundaries so that none of the daredevils risk their health.

Seasons

Let the participants think about how to use a “winter” product in the summer (for example, skates: they will come in handy at a picnic if you forgot to take a knife with you (absurd, but fun) and publish a photo-instruction. Prize - the most original!

Geography

Ask users to show which parts of the world your product has already “visited”. Many people like to share photos from their vacations and travels—there will be plenty of people willing to take part in the competition.

Photo collage

Participants must take a photo story about some process related to your brand. For example, if you sell Christmas tree decorations, ask participants to document the process of decorating the Christmas tree.

Find the mistake!

Award the most competent participant in the competition who took as many photographs of erroneously written advertisements as possible (and, unfortunately, there are many of these in every city). A useful competition in all respects.

Do you love ... (brand)?

“Show in the photo how attached you are to our brand.” Don’t forget about the 18+ restriction, otherwise people are different...

I'm a morning person!

Only those who post photos between 6:00 and 7:00 Moscow time can take part.

What did you do on the weekend?

“Show us what you did over the weekend and get the most likes to win a prize!”

There are 100,000 of us!

“We share our joy with you and want the same in return! Take a selfie with this number and post it on your page - the one with the most likes will win..."

Come up with a slogan

The winner will be the best dreamer who comes up with the best slogan for your company and takes a photo with it.

Complete the sentence

Let your users think a little! It is advisable to take a phrase related to your product or brand. Don’t forget that the basis of Instagram competitions is photographs, so all ideas should be closely intertwined with them.

Ideas for competitions on VKontakte

Repost

Quiz

Ask an interesting question, and a prize will be drawn among those who answer correctly using a random number generator.

Find the passphrase

Encrypt some code on your website or page and give hints on how to find it.

There are more and more of us!

Give a prize to every 100th person who reposts a post about you reaching a certain subscriber threshold (For example: “We are 50,000!”).

Connoisseurs

“Do you know in what year the company “your company name” was founded? Leave your answer in the comments!” The winner will be the one who gives the correct answer first.

One Hundred Words

Give some long, complex word and ask your followers to make as many other words from it as possible. The one who comes up with the maximum combinations will be the lucky one.

The most original way

“Come up with the most original way to use our product and take a photo of it.” The most inventive person will receive a gift.

Riddle one day

Ask your subscribers to repost the entry about the competition, and in the information for it, indicate that on such and such a date a riddle will be heard in the commentary on the topic - the first person to guess it will receive a prize.

Come up with a name or signature

Let participants come up with an extraordinary caption for a photo and share the post on their page.

Rates

Ask your subscribers what the score will be in the match between team A and team B. The first one to give the correct answer will receive a prize. (It is appropriate to hold such competitions during the Olympiad and championships).

Photo game

Phototoad

“Make the most original photoshop with our brand and win a prize!”

Best photo report

Participants are given a time limit during which they must make an interesting report and post it on their page with a link to your company’s page.

Best video story

Ask your subscribers to record an interesting video on a given topic, but remember that for a successful advertising campaign for such a competition, you need to provide a good prize.

Write a poem

But not just a verse, but with a mention of your company. You choose the winner yourself.

Competition for the number of invitees

Your subscribers should invite as many people as possible to the group. Those invited will write back to you about the person who invited them to the group.

Best Avatar

Anyone can become a participant. To do this, just come up with an original avatar for the group and send it in the comments to the entry about the competition.