How to hold a contest or draw on VKontakte: examples, rules + Checklist

Have you ever thought about holding a competition on VKontakte? If the answer is yes, then sit back: today we’ll talk about how to make a draw in VK.

Let's start with preparation: set a goal, decide on prizes, and compose a competition post. For clarity, I will give 15 real examples of competitions. I’ll tell you how to choose a winner and calculate the effectiveness of a marketing campaign.

At the end of the article you will find a small bonus - a checklist in infographic format.

How to conduct competitions and sweepstakes in VK: 5 stages

The draw in VK begins with planning. Let's highlight 5 main stages of drawing up a plan: from setting goals to promoting competition materials.

Target

At the first stage of planning, decide what goal you are pursuing. For example, you are an SMM specialist. The customer wants to increase the number of subscribers in the group and increase awareness of the new brand. To do this you need to hold a draw.

Possible goals:

• Audience involvement.
• Community promotion.
• Informing consumers about a new product or service.
• Increasing brand awareness.
• Increased sales.

Setting a goal is the most important stage of planning. That's why I put it first on the list. Once you define the goal of the competition, you can evaluate its effectiveness.

Example: the goal is to increase sales of goods in a sports store. Before the drawing, you sold 100 dumbbells per month through a group on VK. During the competition, sales increased by 30%. This means that the goal has been achieved.

Prizes

Now decide on the prize - what you will give away. As a rule, these are the company's goods and services. For example, you are the owner of an online store that sells hoverboards. Two weeks ago a new model appeared in your catalogue.

To inform the audience about the product, hold a competition: compete for one new hoverboard model among community subscribers on VKontakte.

Some SMM specialists and entrepreneurs make a mistake: they give away goods and services that are not related to their field of activity. There is no point in choosing an iPhone as a prize if your company builds frame houses.

What can be played:

• Telephones and household appliances.
• Stickers on VKontakte.
• Coupons for discounts and bonus points.
• Souvenirs.
• Company services and partner products.

Terms and rules

The next stage is to draw up the conditions and rules of the competition. They should be simple: for example, a regular repost of a post. If you are holding a creative competition, describe in detail all the actions that the participant must perform.

Conditions and rules can be divided into difficulty levels:

• Easy difficulty level. Like, repost the competition entry and join the group.
• Medium level of difficulty. Leave a comment under the post, take a survey or solve a riddle.
• Hardcore. Make a video, write a story or poem, send a painting.

Be sure to tell us about the restrictions: the participant’s account must be open; The story should have a thematic hashtag. Come up with restrictions that will help exclude “prize-catchers” from the participants.

Do not violate the rules of the VKontakte social network. For example, prohibited conditions include: the promotion will end when the post reaches 300 reposts and 200 likes; The winner will be determined by the number of likes under the competition repost on their page.

More detailed information about the rules for holding promotions can be found in the official information.

Competition post

Now you need to compose and execute a competition post. Describe the conditions of the draw in detail. Add lists and emoticons (emoji). Divide the text into paragraphs. The post should attract attention - stand out among other posts. Specify the deadline: the date when the competition ends.

Be sure to attach a bright picture to the text. Add a photo of the prize and a brief description of the conditions to the image: date, step-by-step actions.

Advertising and promotion

You can skip this step if you have an audience. Subscribers of the group will begin to repost the competition entry. This will increase your organic reach. The recording will be promoted without additional “injections” in the form of advertising.

If you have a new community and the goal of the giveaway is to attract subscribers, then the contest entry needs to be promoted.

There are three main ways to attract participants:

1. Purchasing advertising in thematic communities. Find 5-6 public pages with related topics. Agree with the administrator to buy advertising: you will pay money, and he will repost your competition entry to the community.
2. Targeted advertising. Launch advertising in the news feed to your target audience.
3. Collaboration with bloggers. Partner with famous bloggers or buy giveaway advertising from them.

Rules for holding competitions

There are times when, after the publication of an event, the moderator contacts the owner of the group and reports that the rules of the competition have been violated. Therefore, be sure to study the requirements for creating a draw in the social network documentation.

To avoid getting banned, you should understand what conditions are acceptable and unacceptable. When conducting VKontakte drawings, you can use the following conditions:

• repost the entry and do not delete it from the page until the end of the competition;
• join your group;
• like the post;
• subscribe to only one additional source: a Youtube or Instagram channel, as well as another public page.

It’s worth taking a closer look at the reasons that can lead to a community being blocked:

• Reaching a certain number of likes for a post. It is clear that now we are not talking about the fact that you wrote an excellent post that interested many people, got into the Prometheus system and gained thousands of hearts. And we are talking about a situation where the owner is trying to get likes. However, sometimes the goal is impossible to achieve. For example, get 10,000 likes for the drawing to take place.
• Subscribe to more than two sources.
• Requirement to add another user as a friend. In this case, the person’s personal page is affected, which is unacceptable according to the site’s rules.
• It is impossible not to indicate the prize that the winner can receive. A person should know that he can win if he fulfills all the conditions of the competition. You can offer several products or services, as long as they are all listed.

To conduct a VK competition, follow all the rules outlined in the documentation. Do not try to gain subscribers using bots and special utilities. Otherwise, the administration may ban your group forever without the possibility of recovery.

How to sum up the results of the draw?

It's time to sum up the results of the competition and choose the winner. If this is a creative competition, then you need to evaluate the work of all participants. Entrust the assessment of work to several “experts”. This will be fair to all participants.

Community subscribers can act as an expert jury. Create a poll about whose work they like best. Let the audience choose the winner themselves.

Beware of scams. Some participants (or competitors) can cheat votes - it's not difficult. Keep an eye on the dynamics of votes: if in the first two days one contestant received 20 votes, and on the third day another 100 were added, then something is fishy here. Check the pages of the last users who voted - as a rule, these are bots.

In the case of repost and like contests, where the winner will be chosen at random, use special services and applications: for example, random number generators.

Let's look at the best online services and applications for determining the winners of VK competitions and sweepstakes.

What do you need?

1. Choose a prize that you will give to one of those who repost your post (it does not have to be any product, it can be 100 rubles to the phone account). I recommend giving only what you actually have in stock, and so that the picture does not differ from what you will actually give. It is advisable to entrust the image to an experienced designer; it needs to be attractive