Creating an online video competition on YouTube is a great way to get some excitement going around your website, product or service even if you are not techie at all. I know there are lots of whizzy scripty ways to do this stuff, but I wanted to lay out a system even the non-techies can follow.
Just recently, one of our companies held a video competition on YouTube. We invited people to submit video entries to win a whole year’s worth of wealth creation mentoring with me personally (not available normally) and lots of other goodies. We called it “Gold For Christmas” and the prizes were worth over £12,000 ($15,000).
As well as creating a load of excitement and goodwill among our subscribers, the competition generated a TON of traffic to our YouTube channel, LOADS of comments on our blog, HUNDREDS of Tweets and Facebook mentions and extra sales of our range of products and events.
I thought it might be useful if I outlined the step-by-step system I used!
ONLINE VIDEO COMPETITION
Competition – Preparation
First of all, you need to decide which key word / phrase you want to target with your competition. Next you need to know that the competition entries are going to upload their entry video to their own YouTube accounts but you want them to do it in a very specific way.
1. You want them all to save the video onto their computer/YouTube channel using a specific file naming protocol such as “your-website_name_competition_entryname.wmv”
2. You want them all to use the same title to their video when editing the details
3. Ditto the same introductory paragraph in their description, including your http:// URL first. An example would be
YourCompany.com – XYZ Company is giving away over $XXXXXX worth of prizes on 31st December to the best entry in their “Name Your Competition” competition. The winner will enjoy XXXXX plus many other goodies. Visit us at YourWebsiteName.com/competitionpage to find out how to enter.
Your entrant should then add a paragraph about themselves and their entry including their full URL so they enjoy the link benefit from YouTube too.
4. You want them to use the same set of “tag” keywords which you give them (which should also include some tag keywords/phrases that the “most viewed” videos on YouTube in your niche/specialty also use).
All of the above ensures that all the competition entries are shown next to each other in the “Related videos” box hopefully right after some of the most viewed videos in your niche or speciality that are on YouTube already.
5. They must email you when they have uploaded their entry with the YouTube URL of their video. You must check they have done the above properly.
Competition – Setup
1. Set Up The Competition Criteria & Prizes. Decide what you are giving away and what you want people to actually do, to enter. Write a simple list of instructions or criteria, and keep it short.
2. Start tweeting, mentioning in your blog and ezine, that something big is coming….hint at the value of the prizes and the date the competition will launch. Do this every day from now until the end of the competition.
3. Set up a YouTube account / channel if you don’t have one and link it to your website. Either upload some existing video, or favourite some that are relevant to your target market.
4. Set up a blog post explaining the competition, the prizes and tease your readers with anticipation. Add an email signup box to capture the “eager beavers” and start segmenting the potential entrants. On the “thank you” landing page, list the instructions on what to do, to enter.
5. On the launch date, send out an email to your list, Twitter like crazy and update your Facebook page with a link to come to your blog to enter their name and email’s to be jumped through to the page where they find out how to enter the competition.
6. Start embedding a video per blog post, to your blog and email the URL to your entrant. Keep the Blog post name short! Favourite each entry on your YouTube channel.
7. Get the entrant to get their mates to come and vote for them on your blog via the comments box on their particular post, saying why they should win. Tell them to tweet, text their friends the URL, talk about it on their Facebook profiles, including their particular link to your site.
8. When it’s time to judge, count up the votes and then apply any other criteria you want to levy, choose your winner.
9. Try and make a big event of the announcement – do it live on BlogTalkRadio or ustream.com and broadcast the show details, announce the winner live and get a video made,
10. Include a “Word From Our Sponsors” kind of promotion, making everyone aware of the product or service that the winner will enjoy, and the URL where everyone else can get theirs.. buy 4000 hours youtube watch time