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08 nov

Ideas for Running a Spring Pinterest Sweepstakes or Contest

By: Julie Link | In: Best Practices, Contests, Marketing, Pinterest, Sweepstakes, sweepstakes company

A few of you who are reading this right now may be thinking, wait, it’s not even Thanksgiving yet and you are already talking about spring! But for marketers, we are already headed into 2017, planning-wise anyway. Spring is a great time to run a sweepstakes or contest. People are ready for winter to be over and are looking forward to seeing anything and everything fresh and new. There are a lot of great thematic opportunities in the spring. Below are a few ideas for running a spring Pinterest sweepstakes or contest.

But, before we get into the spring ideas, I want to first touch on some of the benefits of running a Pinterest sweepstakes or contest:

Promote your merchandise or messaging virally

When you make pinning your featured images a requirement of a sweepstakes entry, it allows your merchandise and/or messaging to be spread virally. The hope is that their friends will see it and come to your website as well. To be legally compliant, you must include a campaign hashtag that includes the word #sweepstakes or #contest.

Engage and reward consumers

Running a Pinterest sweepstakes or contest is an easy, fun and cost-effective way to engage and entice consumers. Offering a compelling prize is a great way to reward consumers for pinning your merchandise. But, be sure to offer a prize that is proportionate to the amount of effort that is involved in the entry process.

Increase your email database     

Lastly, we recommend hosting an entry form on a microsite that includes your images for pinning and requires entrants to provide their information. While collecting this data, you can also have people opt-in to receive future email communication.

Now that we’ve hopefully convinced you that Pinterest is the way to go, below are a few spring-themed ideas to work with:

Capitalize on Spring Fever

We’ve all suffered from Spring Fever, and what better way to shake off those winter blues than with a Pinterest sweepstakes? For a retailer, show the hottest spring looks, for a travel company, entice people with photos of a warm weather locale.

Go on Spring Break

The shiny beacon of hope for any student (or parent) is Spring Break. Market your Pinterest sweepstakes to families, throw in a trip for four, and call it a day.

March Madness

Okay, we all know about the brackets, but do you know what the second most popular activity surrounding March Madness? FOOD and BEER! A food-related or beer-centric Pinterest sweepstakes is a no-brainer for relevant companies

Here are a few others themes to consider including in a Pinterest sweepstakes or contest:

April Fool’s Day

Earth Day

Mother’s Day

St. Patrick’s Day

Fitness or Outdoors-Related Sweepstakes

Spring Fling

Spring Sale

Easter

Spring Cleaning

Spring Forward

The possibilities are endless. Just consider the message you are trying to convey and the audience you are trying to reach. Pair it with a spring-related event, and you have yourself a fun Pinterest theme. However, keep in mind when running a sweepstakes on Pinterest that you ensure that you are following their most recent guidelines. It’s important to note that their guidelines frequently change with respect to running sweepstakes and contests. On that note, here is a recent blog article that outlines some new rules for Pinterest.

In conclusion, Hiring a company like Sync Marketing to oversee your promotion will guarantee that you are complying with all the latest Pinterest guidelines. Also, our team has a lot of creative ideas for running a spring Pinterest sweepstakes or contest. We will put together a fun and creative Pinterest spring campaign for you. Contact Sync Marketing today!

Ideas for Running a Spring Pinterest Sweepstakes or Contest


10 oct

Updated Pinterest Guidelines for Running a Sweepstakes

By: Sync Marketing | In: Best Practices, Contests, Marketing, Pinterest, Sweepstakes

Running a Sweepstakes or Contest on Pinterest is a great way for a company to market themselves. They are able to encourage consumers to “pin” a variety of their products and pages, which in turn increases engagement. This also results in entrants’ friends seeing the pins and therefore leads them to the company’s website. But, before running any promotion on a social media platform, it’s important to know what is allowed by that platform. Recently, Pinterest has made some changes, so today I will discuss the updated Pinterest guidelines for running a sweepstakes or contest.

All of these updated guidelines can be found in Pinterest’s Acceptable Use Policy. Previously, their guidelines stated that companies were not permitted to “run a sweepstakes where each Pin, board, like, or follow represents an entry;” require that people “Pin from a selection;” or “require a minimum number of Pins.” Within the new guidelines, none of those restrictions appear in the Pinterest Acceptable Use Policy.

In addition, the new guidelines state that companies who run campaigns should, “encourage authentic behavior, keep Pinterest spam-free, and be sure to comply with all relevant laws and regulations.” What does this mean for you and your brand? Make sure your campaign hashtag includes, “sweepstakes” or “contest.” This way consumers are aware that their friend is pinning that particular image for a chance to win a prize.

The new guidelines also state that companies who are running campaigns should not require participants to Pin one specific image. Furthermore, they acknowledge that requiring consumers to Pin from a selection is now allowed. This is a benefit to your brand because the more options there are to pin, the more diversity of images of your brand will be on Pinterest.

“Give Pinners the ability to choose Pins based on their tastes and preferences, even if it’s from a selection or a given website.” – Updated Pinterest Guidelines

Lastly, Pinterest is now requiring that there is a limit of one entry per person. This new guideline may affect entry numbers slightly, but know you are getting more genuine content.

What do the updated guidelines mean to companies running a sweepstakes on Pinterest? More brand exposure for you! Now that you can require pinning from a group of images, means your images will appear on entrants’ boards. With this change, you should definitely consider adding a Pinterest sweepstakes to your marketing plans. Not convinced? Here is an article giving five reasons why Pinterest is great for business.

As we’ve said before, social media platforms change their guidelines on a regular basis. Recently Facebook has taken out the language about not allowing shares for extra entries. This implies that this is now permitted. Here is a link to Facebook’s guidelines.

Regardless, it’s important that you make sure you’re up-to-date on all of these changes each time you run a social media campaign. Hiring Sync will help you with knowing you’re running a complaint promotion. Our team is in direct contact with the legal teams at all of the social media platforms. We are even alerted if there are any changes to their guidelines that could affect your upcoming promotion. Consider reaching out to Sync for your next sweepstakes or contest.

Updated Pinterest Guidelines for Running a Sweepstakes or Contest.