We love Halloween; it’s one of our favorite holidays. So naturally we were thrilled to work with our friends at Pumpkin Masters again this year. In case you aren’t familiar, Pumpkin Masters provides a variety of carving tools and patterns that allow even novice carvers to create works of pumpkin art.
Our challenge was to build awareness for Pumpkin Masters during the Halloween season.
When we started researching Halloween and pumpkin carving, we found that consumers like to show off their carving creations – and not just on their porches for neighbors to see, but also across the social web on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. People were sharing their handiwork with friends and family as well as the broader community with hashtags like #pumpkincarving, #pumpkincarvingparty and #pumpkinmaster. A quick audit found over 30,000 mentions of pumpkin carving across the social web; it’s no surprise “Pumpkin Carving Contest” is a top-mentioned term (see our word cloud at the top of the post).
Armed with this insight, we created a way to encourage consumer creativity and friendly competition through a social pumpkin-carving contest hosted on Facebook. The call to action is simple: Upload your pumpkin design for a chance to a win $5,000 grand prize.
Social contests can be a great way to generate content and excitement for your brand, especially for seasonal brands where the window is small but the passion index is high. Whatever holiday your brand celebrates, consider the following tips when you start creating your brand’s holiday social media strategy:
- Make it easy for consumers to participate.
- Identify a current consumer behavior and incentive with a prize that matters to your target audience.
- Tie it to your brand – but don’t make it only about your brand.