Room 214 has run a number of successful sweepstakes and promotions for clients. We have developed custom applications to run contest and sweepstakes for brands and explored a number of different tools that can run them as well. The choice of a developing a custom system versus using a platform depends on a number of factors: budgets, customization, and time frame among others. Considering these factors can help you make the determination if a custom application or a platform is right for your business.

We have reviewed many tools out there, and they all have very similar feature sets (Simple Forms, Fan-gating, Sharing functionality, etc.) But because there are so many tools out there, it can be difficult to know which one is right for your business. Here is a rundown of the top five contest and sweepstakes tools on the market.

Price point: $5-$250 (Plus minimal daily fees)

One of the leaders in the market in terms of exposure and offerings, the Wildfire contest and sweepstakes applications are both inexpensive and easy to implement. They offer three levels of their platform, which is helpful for different customization or promotional types.

Recent Promotions using Wildfire: Sony, Virgin, Facebook, Target, Unilever

Price point: $300-$3,000 (Plus monthly fees)

While the price point is a bit above others, they do offer some really unique features to their platform. The platform is very customizable and has a terrific back-end management admin. Pretty much everything you need to run a contest or sweepstakes is contained within the tool: fraud guard, winner selection, and sharing incentive tool and much more.

Recent Promotions using Strutta: Crate & Barrel, Kiehls’, and Canadian Hockey

Price point: $30-$1,100

This application platform is incredibly simple, and offers lots of different options that are also easy to implement. We recently implemented this solution for ca client and had the contest up and running within 15 minutes. In addition it also has some great analytics and reporting to give insight into the entrants.

Recent Promotions Using Offerpop: CNBC, Cesar Millan, GILT

Price point: $60-$80 (weekly)

One of the biggest benefits of this platform is it’s contest moderation tools; they make it very easy to run small or large campaigns. Another great feature is they make it very simple to push promotions to multiple platforms outside of Facebook: (iFrame capability, micro-site, or mobile). Great customization and a reasonable price make this a great tool for small or large companies.

Recent Promotions Using Votigo: Ford, Intel, AOL, Sharpie, Sears, CP+B

Price point: $300-$500

We like this platform a lot for its integration with email marketing (Mail Chimp). Not many of the applications available have that direct option. The functionality of the admin is pretty straightforward and they also make embedding into website simple if necessary.

Recent Promotions Using Artistic Hub: Sports Illustrated Kids, Raiders, Tapatio, Warner Brothers

While there are many social networks that would fit into this conversation (Google+, Pinterest, Tumblr), there is one in particular who’s growth and engagement is already attracting brands.

Instagram is now the world’s largest mobile social network. When you look at it’s astounding growth numbers it’s hard to deny that brands should think about a presence in the community.

Already, we’ve seen great examples of brands using Instagram including Starbucks, Red Bull, Threadless and Burberry. Take a look at Room 214’s POV document which outlines some great thoughts and tips on how Instagram can be used from a brand perspective.

Luckily for you, Facebook is rolling out a new functionality called Parent-Child. It allows you easily claim, administrate, and manage places pages and check-in deals for brands with more than five locations.

There are a few huge benefits to Parent-Child:

• Locations Tab: As seen on pages like Sanrio and Starbucks, Facebook will list all of your retail locations under a single tab. This allows visitors and admins to easily find place pages for indivdual locations.

• Manage Deals: You can now push a single check-in deal to every location through the parent page. It makes it a snap to roll out an all-encompassing campaign to every location. You also keep the ability to create individual deals at single locations.

• Assign Admins: A longstanding debate has been whether to create individual Facebook pages for every location, or to operate a single brand page. Now you can operate from a single brand page, but allow your local store managers to run their own Place page.

• Consistent Branding: As you claim your child places pages, you are able to create uniform descriptions and meta data. You may also push a single profile image to every place page. This keeps your place pages consistent with the parent page.

To read up on all of the main features, and to learn how to get Parent-Child implemented on your Facebook community, check out our Facebook Parent-Child slideshare document below:

Update: We’ve had several folks reach out to us who were interested in setting up these features for their page. Truth be told, Facebook doesn’t want these features to roll out to all page owners at this time. Your best course of action is to contact an agency with preferred advertiser status and work with them (ie. Room 214).

After many long, heated conversations, they decided that the best thing to do would be to tag all marketing materials and websites with the phrases “Find us on Facebook” and “Follow us on Twitter”. That’ll do the trick…right?

Most of us now know that the answer is no, that will not do the trick. Yet lately, I’m seeing more and more examples of brands begging for fans and followers, and then doing nothing with them.

Before you look at your huge social following, pat yourself on the back and start thinking about which leather sofa will look best in that corner office upstairs, let me just throw a few things out there:

• Fans are not king. Engaged fans are.

• Everywhere they go, consumers are surrounded by “Like” and “Follow” buttons, and clicking them has become almost second nature. It is your responsibility to turn those fans into brand advocates.

• 100 fans who are talking about your brand are far more valuable than 10,000 who are not.

• Consumers are used to seeing companies who give out incentives for becoming a fan. When’s the last time you rewarded your current fans for being so loyal? That oughta get ‘em talking…

• The only thing worse than negative comments and complaints from fans & followers is an empty response from the brand.

The short answer? Fans & followers are worth as much or as little as you like. Let this serve as a friendly reminder of a few key Social Media best practices.

Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s not enough. Having social media accounts is certainly a great (and quite necessary) start, but if you don’t use them to interact with your current and potential customers, there’s really no point.

Luckily, I’ve picked 3 simple and free social media tools to get you pointed in the right direction:

• OnlyWire: Have a few social media accounts, lots to say and little time? Check out OnlyWire. This tool enables you to post content across multiple social networks at the same time, with the push of a button. The service includes all of the top social and professional networks, and the free version allows for 300 submissions per month. Say goodbye to multiple log-ins and hello to your customers.

• Roost: Use Facebook and Twitter, but not always sure what to post or when? Give your content a boost with Roost. Their free Campaign Creator connects to your profiles, lets you schedule single posts or entire campaigns, and analyzes their reach to suggest areas for improvement. This tool can also apply a fancy algorithm to your Facebook data, spitting out a score that determines whether or not your audience will drive business to your location. It’ll even tell you the geographic spread of your fans.

• Timely: Under the impression that the more times you hop on Twitter and drop your knowledge the better? Timely begs to differ…according to this tool, it’s not about the number of times you tweet, it’s about which times you tweet (however, please don’t forget that first and foremost it’s about the content). Timely will analyze your last 199 tweets, figure out the best time slots, and auto-schedule your posts based on the data. Now you can start dropping that knowledge when it’s most likely to be picked up.

With new social media monitoring tools (many of them free) popping up almost by the day, there should be no excuse for neglecting your networks. Start engaging with your current and potential customers and you might be surprised by the increase in online conversations surrounding your brand.

Don’t worry – it’s not a throwback to the days when your friends would send you a link to a photo you stared at, only to be freaked out and thrown out of your seat when a screaming zombie appeared. That’s old school. In an age where over 800 million people are active on Facebook, Take This Lollipop taps into collective fears about privacy and personal information in social networking on a much deeper level.

After clicking on the link from your feed, you are directed to a landing page where you can launch the app. The Facebook Connect logo appears, making it clear that the app will use your login and profile information if you provide access to it. There is also message reassuring you that none of your information will be stored, and nothing will be posted without your approval.

If you’re a fan of horror movies, you’ll get a familiar feeling as you are taken down a dark hallway where faint light emanates from a room. Distorted sounds and a broken soundtrack immediately create an unnerving atmosphere. As the camera enters the room, you see a malnourished and disheveled man at a desk.

His scarred face, damaged fingernails and aggressive look gives you the idea that he is clearly disturbed. Maybe you’re not yet scared, and when you see that he is on Facebook, you may feel a sense that this is probably going to be lame. That feeling of false security quickly fades as you see the profile he’s logging onto: it’s yours.

Feelings of dread overcome you and your attention is immediately gripped as you see him hovering over your profile, your posts, your photos and posts from your friends, and there’s nothing you can do about it. As he further trolls your profile, he grows unstable and desperate, unable to decide what to do next. Soon, he knows, and is back to typing: he’s looking up your address on Google maps. For a moment, he is eerily calm as he creepily caresses his screen. If you’re not disturbed yet, you will be: his head turns slowly toward you, revealing a delivish grin on his face.

Next, he appears in his car, driving furiously to your location. Cut scenes show him gripping his steering wheel in anger, at times even screaming and looking very dangerous. He finally arrives at his destination, and as he is shown exiting his car, the final scene shows the camera panning over to reveal your profile photo on his dashboard. Creepy. The app concludes and you are taken to a final screen. The ride is over.

After a few moments and once your heart is beating back to normal, you breathe a sigh of relief: it’s all just a trick, and you’re safe. There is no creepy cyberstalker on his way to pay you a visit. Most importantly, no one’s hacked your Facebook account, and all of the stuff you never wanted the world to see is still private. Or is it? Just kidding — it really is, I promise.

At the time of this writing, over 350,000 users have Liked Take This Lollipop, and Google News locates over 40 articles written about the website. Though who was behind it was a mystery at first, it was later determined to be the work of Los Angeles-based director and experienced digital marketer Jason Zada, the brain behind the highly successful “Elf Yourself” interactive campaign for Office Max.

Though Zada said in an interview with the New York Times that he is not promoting any product or brand, and he simply created Take This Lollipop to entertain and thrill, he has managed to capture the attention of hundreds of thousands of people. If nothing else, by letting his work speak for itself, he has found an intelligent way to further market himself and enhance his reputation as an interactive and experiential marketing expert.

Why it’s smart

• Uses Facebook Connect integration for quick and easy login
• Draws from a user’s Facebook profile and photos to create a compelling and personalized experience
• No brand or product associated, leaving participants curious about its origin and motivations of the creator
• Perfectly timed to release close to Halloween

Why it’s effective

• Taps into collective and individual fears about privacy and information on social networks
• Makes people feel vulnerable: it’s disturbing to see someone looking at our Facebook profile, one of the most personal digital properties anyone can have
• Emotional impression haunts the viewer long after the interactive experience is over
• The cinematography and production value is high, and Bill Oberst delivers a chilling performance as the cyberstalker

Facebook Privacy Settings and Previewing Your Profile

Have you tried the app? If so, I bet you’re feeling like now would be a great time to double-check your privacy settings, even if the cyberstalker in Take This Lollipop was shown as somehow having your password. If you haven’t looked them over in a while, the interface may be unfamiliar because it has recently changed.

In the new Privacy Settings area, you can select the audience that you want your posts to be visible to by default. You can make all of your new posts public, visible only to friends, or even keep certain lists of people from seeing them by selecting the custom option.

Also, from this area you can control how people find and connect with you, whether you want to enable others to tag you, and what applications and websites have access to your profile. For each item in each of the sections, you have extensive control over what you share publicly or with friends, and the level of access you wish to provide to apps, websites and features within Facebook.

You can also control what information from your profile is visible to the public and your friends. To do so, go to your profile page and click on the “Edit Profile” button in the top-right corner under the “Home” link. In the drop-down menus next to each item, you can select who can see that detail of information.

Once you’ve fine-tuned your privacy settings, you can preview your profile to see how it looks to others. On your profile page, simply click on the “View As” button next to the “Edit Profile” button.

You can type in the name of a friend or acquaintance you’re connected with, and see a preview of how your profile appears to them.

You an also click on the “public” link on the preview page to see how it looks to anyone who’s not on your friends list.

Though your profile is all set, you’re still not finished: you still have photos to secure. To control privacy settings for pictures, go to your Photos section and click on the button under the right corner of the thumbnail for a photo album. In the drop-down menu, select the audience you want to share its photos with.

Going through your privacy settings periodically is always a good idea. However, this only keeps people who aren’t on your friends list from seeing your personal information and content you wish to keep private. If someone has found a way to hack into your profile, everything will be available for view. Keeping passwords secure, electronic devices like phones and iPods safe, and logging out of Facebook on public computers is the best way to keep creepy guys in dark rooms from getting access to your account.

Have you taken the lollipop? Post your reaction in the comments – we want to know what you have to say.

• YouTube videos are 50 times more likely to appear on the first page of Google results than a text page
• YouTube is the second largest search engine in the U.S.
• As of February 2011, visitors were spending around 2.9 billion hours on YouTube per month

When you look at the facts, YouTube optimization makes a whole lot of sense. To get you started, here is a great video series that covers everything you need to know about YouTube SEO.

Content Optimization:

• Start Building Content: You should be creating a portfolio of content on YouTube. Plan to build in video with your normal campaigns. But video production is so costly, right? Wrong. All you need is iMovie and an iPhone to start creating content. If that’s too much to handle you can try one of the many screen share tools, an online slideshow creator, or a text-to-video service like xtranormal.

• Keep It Relevant: As you begin creating content, ask yourself this question: “Will this be useful in three months?” If the answer is no, it’s unlikely that your video has real replay value. Try to create content that will be relevant in the future… think long shelf life.

• Do Your Research: Before you begin making videos, do some keyword research using YouTube’s keyword tool. This will give you an idea of which videos will be successful. As an example, if you search “NBA” in Google, you’ll get results on players, news, and game scores, etc. If you search “NBA” in YouTube, many of the top videos will be about dunks, brawls, and highlights. This is a clue that a dunk compilation will likely do much better than a player profile video.

• Competitive Research: Do a normal YouTube search for some videos that are similar to the content you want to create. What is already working? What do people seem to like? What is most popular?

Metadata Optimization:

• Optimize Metadata for Video Search: Your metadata can help you appear in searches and gain traffic, but your content has to be good to experience true success (surprise). However, a well optimized video can help your visibility. Optimize your video title, tags, description, and category to appear in searches. Remember, YouTube search works differently than normal search engine results. If you need some clues, go back to your competitive and keyword research and see which video titles are performing the best. There is a great explanation of metadata here.

• Thumbnails: YouTube thumbnails are automatically chosen near the 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 marks. As you create content, plan to have something visually interesting happening at one of these points. Most people will only have a choice between these three thumbnails, so pick the most visually interesting one. In the case that you are a YouTube partner, you can upload whatever thumbnail image you would like.

Video Promotion:

• Leverage Existing Networks: The obvious thing to do is promote your videos on your website, email newsletter, and social networks. Take advantage of any platform where you have the ability to post a video.

• YouTube Promoted Videos: YouTube promoted video ads allow you to target your videos to specific keywords and pay for views. As a bonus, when you run promoted video ads, YouTube allows you to create a call-to-action link on your video, which can be used to drive traffic to another site. There is a great tutorial on how to do this here.

• Annotations: Use annotations on your other popular videos to drive traffic to newer videos. This can easily be done through the YouTube Annotations tool.

• Link building: In many cases, over 40% of views on your videos will come from sites outside of YouTube. Create a plan to reach out to bloggers and other sites, and build embeds of your YouTube videos.

YouTube Community:

• Channel Design: Spend some time on your YouTube channel. A blank YouTube channel is much like a blank Facebook page. Create a color scheme, upload a background, and organize your playlists, subscriptions and other modules.

• Moderation and Response: Keep a close watch on the comments that happen on your videos and your channel. Be sure to answer questions and respond to comments quickly. Treat these folks like you would treat visitors to your other social pages.

• Engage Fans: Videos with more ratings and comments will appear higher in YouTube search results. Within your content, you should encourage fans to rate, comment, and subscribe to your channel.

What we’d like to focus on is a point made by Tech Crunch. In their haste to split these two entities, the folks at Netflix neglected to acquire the social network properties before their big launch. TechCrunch highlights the user who owns the @Qwikster handle on Twitter, who is currently trying to sell this handle to Netflix.

After a look into the top social networking sites, it seems that they have not created an official page on Facebook or YouTube. There are however 7 unofficial fan-created Qwikster pages, all aggregating negative comments about this change.

So why is this oversight so bad? Why is it important to lock these online real estates down before you launch a new brand, company etc?

Control

Because Netflix did not secure these, they are not in control of what their critics and customers say about them. Had they obtained official accounts prior to the announcement, they could give customers and their company an official forum to comment and respond. The messages are out there, and it seems they are doing very little to respond or explain, which is not going to endear them to their customers.

Random Squatters

They now have to deal with people who are holding onto these properties, and will potentially have to pay them in order to acquire (some speculate in the six figure arena). People can get mighty greedy when they have the whip-hand over a corporation. This cost could have been avoided had they handled this in advance, or gotten a similar handle i.e. @QwiksterOfficial. In addition to the cost, they could have avoided a very public discussion about what kind of deal this yoo-hoo was after.

Confusion for Customers

Not having official outlets for your customers to comment, complain or ask legitimate questions can be very confusing. If they comment on an unofficial forum and never get a response, they may feel negatively about your brand.

Embarrassment

Netflix is a revolutionary company; nothing that they have done can change their impact on the digital-media landscape. However, it’s kind of embarrassing that an Internet-oriented company did not think of this in advance. It seems they don’t really even have a cohesive branded presence on YouTube as Netflix.

Four Easy Steps to Avoid This

1. Determine which social networking sites are the best fits for your company. It is usually smart to incorporate more incase you need them, or at least protect them.
2. Research what is already out there, if there is someone who already owns your brand name, what variation could you use across all of the social networks (i.e. if @MyersCorporation is taken, consider @MyersCorporationOfficial), consistency is key.
3. Grab them! (it will probably take less than an hour)
4. Figure out how you are going to consistently leverage these accounts, so that they become synonymous with your official brand.

Main Passfinder State

As you can see with the live app, there’s a lot going on behind the scenes with the Passfinder app. Probably the biggest hurdle to getting this app live was getting the pass logic dialed in, as there are five different passes with different price points and geography restrictions.

For example, the Epic Local Pass provides unlimited skiing or riding at Breckenridge, Keystone and Arapahoe Basin with limited restrictions at Heavenly and Northstar, and also includes 10 restricted days at Vail or Beaver Creek.

In the end, the Passfinder logic was developed to offer the user the lowest price pass based on how many days they might ski at each resort. Based on this logic, each pass moves up or down to reflect which pass options are better than others. Additionally, the user is shown how much it would cost each day they planned to ski based on their selected criteria.

While the goal of the main state was to be visually appealing and light on copy, the more info buttons are customizable modals that give users all the important information about each pass. These modals are integrated so that when pass prices are updated through the backend interface, the prices are adjusted in these more info modals as well.

Facebook Integration

The backend interface is probably my favorite part about this app. As you can see in the screenshot above, you can easily adjust pass prices through a custom backend interface (they change a few times each season). When you change the pass prices, the changes are reflected across all versions of the app, meaning that if the Passfinder is live on five different Facebook pages, the prices will adjust across all five. Whenever a price is updated, the logic automatically adjusts to still give users the cheapest pass for their criteria. Everything adjusts on the fly. Any price changes also update on each passes more info modal, as well as on the existing season passes Facebook app. This seamless integration allows for easy price adjustments that propagate across all live versions of our Passes apps.

Moreover, any price change will also reflect on the web iframe version.

Web Integration

The new iframe web version of our Passfinder also utilizes the pricing database from our Facebook iteration so that when prices are updated through the Facebook backend interface, they are reflected here as well. Similar to the Facebook versions, the logic will adjust to any pricing changes to give user the lowest price pass to suit their needs.

Analytics and Tracking

Outside of common metrics provided by Facebook Insights, we also worked with Vail Resorts to implement custom tracking codes that track clicks from the Passfinder apps to the purchase confirmation page, so when the season is over we’ll be able to determine exactly how much money these apps contributed to 2011-2012 season pass sales. Talk about measuring ROI.

As you can see, you can utilize the social space to achieve your clients goals. Just make sure to know explicitly what those goals are and how they can tie into social channels. Lastly, I wanted to give props to our designers and developers for putting this all together. I’m really happy with how everything turned out.

Post below if you have any questions or comments!

At Room 214, we have been searching for a better wat to tell the world about the great work we do. We found that video is a great way to creatively illustrate the stories and strategy behind our work.

In the video case study above, we walk you through our creative development of a store locator application for the Sanrio and Hello Kitty Facebook pages. So far, we’ve had some great response.

The Store Locator tab (and this video) were recently featured on Facebook Studio, a site which highlights great examples of marketing on Facebook from around the world.

For those of you who would like more details, you can also grab a PDF of the case study from our Slideshare account.

What do you think? Is video a good way of telling the stories behind our work?

We’d love to hear your thoughts!