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

We currently work with a small queue of artists on a project-by-project basis, and are looking to add some more folks to our team. If you find the above videos intriguing and are interested in some freelance work, please shoot Tim Hill an email and set up a time to meet.

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).

Mobile Formatting
More and more Internet users will demand access to content through mobile devices, making the need for mobile formatting even more important. Social-networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, have already adapted to this change. If you haven’t done so already, you should hire a designer to adapt your site to a variety of mobile formats, to ensure consistency in appearance and branding. If users are unable to properly access your site on the format they personally prefer, they are likely not to return to it later.

Dynamic Content
Tablet and mobile viewing will put much more emphasis on dynamic content such as photos, videos and other interactive elements. In fact, these elements will be the dominant focus for most pages. Ensuring that your social-networking sites, your blog and your website have plenty of this content will greatly enhance the experience that customers have when they interact with you. Be sure that your images and videos are high-quality and are relevant to your brand.

Timely Content
Some studies have suggested that tablet users are drawn toward news content or are more likely to seek out news content on these devices. Since users can access content in a user-friendly format at any time of the day – there are no “peak” visitation times – they are more likely to want up-to-the-minute information. Stale blog posts and evergreen content will make your site seem stagnant and irrelevant. Social-media strategies should look for opportunities to link content to current events. Content should be posted regularly and updates should be constant.

Interactivity
More and more mobile users are accessing content through applications rather than through the mobile browsers on their devices. The introduction of tablets has inspired the creation of even more apps in the marketplace, reinforcing their popularity. Businesses should consider ways to convert their content into an app, even if the app is just to bring up the mobile version of their website. Businesses can enhance their strategy by adding exclusive content to the app.

Though tablets are relatively new to the scene, they are already changing the way people interact with online content and access data. Changing your social-media strategies will ensure that you remain competitive and visible to your customers in this changing landscape.

About the author:
Amanda Tradwick is a grant researcher and writer for CollegeGrants.org. She has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Delaware, and has recently finished research on low income grants for college and new york education grants.

Yet in the last week there’s been a flurry of social chatter about the importance of unplugging and the irrelevance of market research. Thank you very much, Gizmodo and Anna Wintour, respectively.

Sensational as these news bits might be, they do have some account planners wondering, “are we allocating our means appropriately?”  But where to start? ROI forecasting has led many businesses to rely heavily on intelligence results. We often see companies leveraging social listening and digital analytics dashboards while simultaneously measuring other key data points like traffic, content and path analysis reports.

But not to worry, business intelligence is likely trending in your favor. According to a survey conducted earlier this year by Richard Herschel, Chair of the Department of Decision & System Sciences at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, about a third of respondents think it is very important that their organization have a business-centric view of the data model to provide a framework for prioritizing and guiding the development of BI (business intelligence) activities.

The intersection of BI and account planning is rich with opportunities to observe consumer behavior on a scale that was just a decade ago considered impossible. Now, researchers and planners are able to access global data points via social listening to deliver not only better services, but also better products, experiences and ideas.  Take for instance, the spirit of holiday giving and our intrinsic love of samples.  Denver based gluten-free foods maker Udi’s capitalized on this insight with their Udi’s Joy Mission campaign to spread both free food and joy for the holidays. Via Facebook, users could log-in and send real Udi’s food to their friends through the tailored application. To ensure everyone was able to enjoy the holiday cheer, Udi’s donated a meal to local food banks for every new person who liked the page.

Although the idea was simple, based on the human desire to gift and give back, the campaign effectively leveraged fostering an undeniable emotional connection, as some of the best campaigns usually do.

(Full disclosure, Udi’s is part of the current client roster of Room 214)

To mine insights, innovators and ideators alike need simply to log on to a site such as Facebook or  Twitter, (never mind Hootsuite or Co-Tweet or any of the other sometimes difficult to navigate and costly tools) to see what the chatter is all about. With a few more clicks, metrics like geo-location, net sentiment and brand passion are easily accessible.  With just a few more clicks in your data gathering process, you’ll be armed with export and tracking APIs.

But what does all of this intelligence-mining really amount to?

Although technology and campaign planning have recently undergone seismic shifts, consumer fundamentals have not. Success, in the case of being able to effectively leverage BI, manifests as the ultimate data-driven understanding of consumers: who they are, where they are, what they’re saying and how they’ll change.

And just this week, Gizmodo published an article staking the claim that “Facebook is Making Us Miserable,” honing in on that je ne sais quoi that most of us are clamoring for. And of course, that level of venerable cool can’t certainly be achieved by unplugging, can it?

It’s a great idea and all, plush with nostalgia and a sense of the good ol’ days, but simply put, we just can’t disconnect. In the era of mandated transparency driven by the two-way 24-hour news cycle, when we encounter an “unplugged” brand that isn’t fully vested in digital communications and social media properties, we can’t help but wonder why they aren’t? Is it because they have something to hide? Something to be ashamed of? Take for example big banks. As of this writing, you won’t find many of them active on Facebook (but that doesn’t mean they’re not listening).

From my point-of-view, at the cross-roads of all of the above, the key to is to rely on every bit of research and the marketing mix available to you. The best brands and the most successful campaigns yield seamless, integrated experiences that blend right in with your life, without you even being aware of it.  And whether or not we’re cognizant of it, we’re watching, listening and waiting for that sweet inspiration to share, just because it really is that cool.

Here at Room 214 we are wrapping up the final few weeks at our current office. We’ve been in this space since 2008, and it’s very exciting to be moving on to a new location. Our new office is will eventually be equipped with fancy new conference rooms, and informal meeting spaces… not to mention room for us to continue growing as a company.

We wanted to pass along a quick photo preview of the new office space as it is being built. We can’t wait for the move!

Social media marketing is deeply rooted in word of mouth. As social media folks (ie. gurus, specialists, slackjaws) we focus on a specific channel, but our end goal is the same: get people talking about our brands and our clients.

As we explain in the video above, effective WOM marketing follows five key principles:

• Credible – Honest and Authentic
• Respectful – Transparent and trustworthy behavior
• Social - Listening to, participating in, responding to and encouraging conversations
• Measurable - The ability to define, monitor and evaluate a program’s success
• Repeatable – The ability to deliver on these principles over and over again

If you like what you see in the video above, you can grab some free presentation slides, and information downloads below. It’s something visual and fun to include in your next presentation about WOM marketing.

WOMM Presentation Resources:

• Download principles 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
• Download the Information Sheet
• Download the Powerpoint slides

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.

Constant Connected Consumer

Understanding how mobile can support your existing marketing programs and developing a mobile strategy is the best place to start. But, if you want to jump right in, one of the easiest and most effective ways to generate mobile marketing success is a dedicated mobile search campaign.

Mobile search as has grown 400% in the past year*. Hybrid campaigns which target desktop computers and mobile devices can be effective, but to truly maximize mobile visibility, advertisers should budget for separate mobile campaigns for these 10 reasons –

1. Mobile use is on the rise and it’s only expected to significantly increase in 2012.

2. Google has seen advertisers experience an 11.5% average increase in mobile CTR with a dedicated mobile campaign.

3. Gain better insight into your campaigns performance allowing you to optimize mobile ads without impacting your desktop campaign.

4. Customized mobile ad creative will connect better with your mobile audience, “Download your mobile coupon”.

5. Mobile device specific features influence immediate action, such as Click-to-Call or Text coupon to 1234.

6. 1in 3 mobile searches have local intent. You can be local in search before you think about location-based apps or services.

7. Mobile optimized landing pages will increase mobile page rank which will improve your campaign performance.

8. Search is a great way to better understand you audience before investing in expanded mobile experiences.

9. As you finish this blog post someone else just purchased a smart phone and mobile search grown.

*Google Insights