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A YouTube Video contest is a good method to gain your audience’s attention.

It can inspire them to interact with your business in a new and exciting way.

In this Post, you will learn to run a successful YouTube contest.

Why a YouTube contest is a great way for your brand

The audience

This video platform has around 1 billion users, which could be the reason that running a YouTube video contest is a smart move for your brand.

With this great population of users, there’s a huge chance of having high participation numbers.

The number of audiences using YouTube on yearly basis is about 40 percent and is not slowing down.

The fact that YouTube reaches more 18 to 34 year-olds than any cable TV network in the United States is most interesting to a marketer.

Running a YouTube video contest is a smart choice for your brand because of this highly desired demographic on YouTube, and engaging with the platform in a way.

The benefits

According to user demographics, there are many ways that running a YouTube contest can be beneficial to your brand. A YouTube contest can help you with:

• Catching a large audience. You’re not only engaging with the video creators and participants Due to the public nature of entries but also with those who watch the entries as well as those who watch from the sidelines without actively engaging.
• User-generateding content. Audience trust people more than brands.

You are effortlessly establishing brand loyalty and trust amongst consumers by encouraging your audience to create their own content as contest entries.

• Improve the traffic of your site or social media channels. A surefire way to help grow your other social media channels and drive traffic to other online assets, such as a blog or website is encouraging users to like or follow your business on other social platforms to get additional entries

We’re going to tell you how you can do this in the most effective method possible once you know some reasons why you should run a YouTube video contest.

Ideas about YouTube contest

In the beginning, Maybe you think that running a video contest might seem intimidating, but there is a lot of methods to make the process simple.

Make sure you start the campaign with a call-to-action video explaining the rules of your contest and what you expect from your audience before you get going on any of the ideas.

Some types of YouTube Contest ideas which you can run include:

• The contest in Commenting: ask the audience to write a comment as their entry
• Ask people to Subscribe: ask people, who are not subscribed on your channel, to enter by subscribing to your channel
• User-Generation video contest: invite your customers to produce and upload a video of themselves using or talking about your service or product
• Upload and vote contest: submit your own video contents and ask other people to vote for it

You can take the following steps to get your campaign going once you have chosen which type of YouTube contest you want to run.

Strategies and Tips for running a YouTube contest

Set Objectives

You need to think about the reasons you are running a contest in the first place before you even start thinking about how you’re going to choose your YouTube video contest winner.

Some Possible goals you want to achieve with your YouTube Contest:

• Improving sales
• retaining customers
• Obtaining consumer information
• Increasing your audience
• Producing leads

Using the S.M.A.R.T goal-setting framework is a great way to streamline your goal making process.

Foundation on this system is focusing on creating goals by making sure they are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.

For example, in your YouTube contest, you can set your primary goal “Our Brand”. I want my YouTube video contest to help improve my overall social media viewers by 15 percent one month after its completion.”

YouTube contest guidelines and policies

Consult YouTube’s content policies and guidelines in order to make sure that you’re running a legal YouTube contest.

Some Important rules include:

• setting of “Official Rules” which You need to have on your contest:
• links to the YouTube Community Guidelines that indicate contents which don’t comply with rules and regulations will be disqualified.
• Your Channel needs to explain all disclosures required by all applicable federal, state, and local laws, rules and regulations, including U.S. sanctions.
• your contents are completely consistent and compliant with the YouTube Terms of Service.
• Your YouTube contest must be run, and all rewards awarded as outlined in your Official Rules.
• Your Brand is responsible for your all aspects of your contest administration and rules.
• You need to contain a legally compliant privacy notice in your Rules that shows how you will use any personal information you collect for the contest and adhere to its use.
• Avoid paying a third party to manipulate some metrics on the YouTube Service. Including likes, numbers of views, dislikes, or subscribers such that those metrics fail to reflect real audience engagement with the YouTube Service.

These rules not only do protect YouTube, but your participants and you yourself as well.

Choose a relevant prize

If the incentive wasn’t something you cared about, certainly you wouldn’t enter a contest, much less go to try creating a video for a YouTube contest.

What are the kinds of things your viewers care about?

What video content does your audience respond to the most?

The answers to questions such as these can give you an important key point to run a successful YouTube contest.

Take advantage of social reach

Encourage your audience to share their content with their own social networks If you are running a YouTube video contest that requires participants to upload a video themselves.

Your Audience might need a little incentive, so consider inserting this as an extra-entry component to your YouTube contest.

For instance, if they share their video to their Facebook pages give them two bonus entries, and if they share a clip on Instagram give them another two entries.

The participants get more entries into the contest, while your brand gets increased exposure so this ends up being a mutually beneficial arrangement.

Where Should You Run Your YouTube Contest?

There are some tips about where you should run the actual YouTube contest.

On YouTube

Many users on YouTube will simply produce a video and ask the audience to follow the required steps.

Or they will link to the landing page in the video description if using a 3rd party app.

On Your Website

Embedding your YouTube contest onto your own website have many advantages for brands.

Promoting Your YouTube Contest

General Announcement Video

With your own YouTube video announce your content.

Describe your contest, competition and how your audience can enter and maximize their chances of winning.

Explain a clear call to action with a sense of urgency.

Use Cards On Older Videos

Certainly, you have lots of videos in your channel that are getting traffic.

You can add YouTube cards to them to promote your contest.

Just remember when the contest is over remove them.

Promote and Share to Other Social Networks

The best way to make sure your contest succeeds is social engagement.

Make sure to strength any existing channels with regular announcements of your current contest.