You cannot expect your brand to gain traction in social media by simply setting up a blog or a Facebook (
) page. You have engage your audience by participating in the conversation, providing value, and reaching out to potential customers. On Facebook, this is especially true - a good campaign push can take your brand a long way. With that in mind, Wildfire has created a web tool and Facebook application that can do just that. With a few simple steps, Wildfire will help you create a comprehensive promotional campaign for your brand on Facebook, Ning, MySpace (
), and your website involving sweepstakes or a user contest.
Building a sweepstakes
Wildfire campaigns just require entering basic information - when does the promotion start, how long does it run for, the name of the campaign, and the prizes. You can choose to build either a sweepstakes, a design contest, a video competition, a challenge based around essays, and a coupon offering. Obviously which one you choose depends on what your goal is.
The customization features are impressive. You can build a professional-looking entry form in almost every way you’d want via drag-and-drop fields, uploading your own images and banners, and establishing your own rules. Even after the initial set-up, you have control over the look and feel of each section on the campaign. Specifically, you can create custom designs for Facebook, Ning, and your website.
Worth the price?
Wildfire’s services do not come free - the standard campaign costs about $0.99 to $2.99 each day the contest runs. To be perfectly honest, this is a reasonable price for a company to run a major social media campaign, and Wildfire’s toolset is nothing short of impressive. If you want a completely white label user-generated contest though, you have to really dish it out - $14.99 per day with a $3000 branding fee.
The reason Wildfire can charge is the quality of the result - a clean, well-executed promotional application that you can embed onto your company’s Facebook page, MySpace profile, Ning social network, or company website. It makes it very easy for users to upload videos, images, or essays as part of their submissions, or to just distribute a 20% off discount to loyal Facebook fans. With a good promotional push, viral hooks, social media, and Wildfire, it really feels like you can create on hell of a contest.
So is it worth the price? If you don’t have at least a moderate presence on Facebook, Ning, Twitter (
), or other social media destinations, then you may not get enough people to sign up for the contest. But if you’ve worked on your web presence and have a core user base, you’re probably going to get more than your 3 dollars a day back.
Invites to Wildfire
Wildfire is currently in beta and invite-only, but that doesn’t mean you can’t try out Wildfire and make your own judgment on this new tool. Wildfire has agreed to give invites out to the first 500 Mashable () readers that sign up for an invite code - just enter “Mashable” in the “Where did you hear about us” box.
