Keeping those social site fans and followers engaged once you get them is always difficult. Obviously, blasting them with advertisement and specials cause them to begin looking right past your company posts. Here is a new approach to engage them and build their enthusiasm for company posts.

We have developed a site to help companies interact with their Facebook and Twitter users in an exciting and enthusiastic way. It is a Social Contest site that allows a company to have giveaways targeting their FB and Twitter users with a clicking competition. This method encourages the fans or followers to pay attention to the Facebook posts and tweets put out by the company. The company then has the ability to show product advertisement or messages on the contest age as well.

We have just gone live with a beta version which targets our own First2Click Facebook and Twitter users. We post a contest schedule and prize(s) for the day each morning at 8:00 AM CST. There may be one or more contests each day. The user can pre-register for the contests once they are posted and they receive additional clicks for their effort. A user can also recommend other users to earn additional clicks.

At the scheduled time we post an active link to Facebook and Twitter announcing the opening of the contest. A user has a better chance at the first click if they are either following First2Click on Twitter, or like the First2Click fan page on Facebook. The first person to click the link and enter their email address in the corresponding box wins the “first click” prize.

We then have a “lucky number” prize which is the same item as the first click prize. After a user’s first click we show them what number they were and what the lucky number is. They then strategically use their remaining clicks to try to hit that lucky click. There is no charge of any kind even for the shipping of the prizes. We have a Winners page that lists the contest winners from each previous contest.

We are finding from the small user base that we currently have that it is addicting, exciting, and promotes enthusiastic conversation on the contest chat board. We are currently working with a few companies to pilot the Contest Sponsoring aspect of http://www.First2Click.net. The ability to stimulate current fans as well as to encourage those fans to recruit other fans is the selling point of this new contest site.

Thank you for the article and guidance.

Tiger. :))