- Define your audience. Ensure you’re using a well-established Yammer group with enough people subscribed to the group to ensure a wide reach.
- Map your goal. Explain the objective of your contest with your audience so they understand the value of their submission.
- Name your prize. What does your audience want? What do they value? What do they need? Pick something that aligns to the level of work you’re asking participants to do to submit their entry. If you’re asking people to submit anything like a video or more, the prize should be on the higher end.
- Build awareness and the contest brand. Post information about the contest at least two weeks in advance. Explain what’s the prize, and why people should participate. Use consistent language, imagery, and design aspects that map back to your brand so when people are scrolling through Yammer, they can easily see what posts are for the contest.
- Kickoff the contest with a bang. Post a kickoff video or something that grabs people’s attention to announce that you’re officially receiving submissions. In your kickoff announcement, make sure you clearly outline:
- Why you’re running this contest
- What the rules are
- How entries should be submitted
- How you will be using content submissions
- When is the deadline
- Resources and guidelines to help people with their submission
- The prize and any disclaimers
- Why they should enter
- Keep up the energy. Post regularly on Yammer with engaging content to remind people to enter the contest, but avoid inundating the Yammer page with more than three contest posts per week. Use various media formats for your posts, such as images, videos, infographics, or PowerPoints. You can also take advantage of Yammer polls to ask questions and engage your audience so they get excited about the contest. Tag relevant people in your messages to increase reach.
- Make everyone a winner. Offer 2nd tier prizes to all participants to make it more enticing to submit.
- Remind people about the deadline. Two weeks before the deadline, begin posting more often to remind people to submit their entry. You can start a countdown so people know exactly how many days are left for them to submit.
- Share examples from real submissions. Once you start receiving submissions, get approval from participants to share their content submissions or at least mention their name in a Yammer post to advertise the contest and inform others that submissions are coming in. This will help people see how easy it is to submit and increases credibility because it shows that other people are interested in entering the contest.
- Have fun! Making your contest approachable and fun is key to getting a high number of contest entries. The chance of winning a prize should encourage people to think creatively about what they can do to win the grand prize. The more guidance and instructions you provide your audience, the higher the number of quality submissions you’ll receive.
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