I found that in Canada the word "Contesting" is used quite a bit when referring to any type of chance to win promotion. So I reviewed the difference between a sweepstakes and a contest. Sweepstakes are a random drawing and the odds are based on the number of people that enter. Contests on the other hand are not games of chance such as sweepstakes, but instead are based on a degree of individual skill or uniqueness such as:

• Intellectual – photo, video, essay, recipe, design
• Personal - most beautiful smile, cutest pet, closest resemblance to a celebrity
• Physica - kicking a 50 yard field goal, tossing bean bags, hole-in-one, etc.

The "Intellectual" category is the most popular now which requires some type of user-generated content to be submitted based on the contest theme and judging criteria. In a contest all entries must be judged or evaluated. Contests are the heart of social promotions today and are a great way to create buzz , awareness and engage followers. Participants will want to share their entries with friends especially if there is a voting phase.

Contests are often used to help reinforce the brand or attributes of a product or service, however, you will receive less entries from contests versus sweepstakes since you are asking people to do some work. The quantity will be lower, but the quality and engagement will be higher. Therefore, I usually recommend to marketers that if they are trying to build their fan base and add to their database, start with a sweepstakes. Once you've establish a following, contests are a great tactic to add to get your followers to help spread the word for you.

Here are some top tips to follow if planning a social media contest promotion:

1. Human nature is to wait to last minute, the longer your submission period, the longer people put off entering.
2. Don’t expect a huge turn-out from a contest. If you want quantity, make it a sweepstakes or keep it real simple. If you want quality, make it more specific to you.
3. Be prepared to provide technical help for uploading videos. No matter how clear you make the instructions, there will be questions. Most however can be solved via email.
4. Getting video and photo submissions are worth the extra work. I have seen some very creative and entertaining submissions from the contests I have managed, many made me laugh out loud.
5. Don’t ask people to specifically write an essay about your product. Expect a low entry rate if you do.
6. Don’t ask your entrants to get too outlandish with their responses. Keep it simple and real.
7. Don’t ask entrants to post items that they may not want to share with the public. Is what you’re asking too private and/or embarrassing?

Lastly, there are federal and state legal regulations that you must be aware of and include in your official rules. As the group in Toronto I spoke to was well aware, the providence of Quebec is very strict and requires bonding and registration for sweepstakes along with all communications to be produced in both English and French-Canadian. This is why you will see many U.S. based promotions excluding Quebec from eligibility.

Let's not forgot that Facebook has it own set of Promotional Guidelines which were recently updated and I wrote this blog post about. All sweepstakes or contest promos that run on a brand's or company's Facebook page must run within a 3rd party application. This caused some discussion at the conference because in order to enter any Facebook application the user must "Allow" the application access to the user's personal profile and other data. Many people are still not comfortable with this and don't understand what data the marketer will be getting and what they will be doing with it. Again, Facebook users need to adjust their privacy settings so that they are not sharing their information with "Everyone". Most apps will only have access to what a user makes public to "Everyone".

I did share some examples of sweepstakes and contest that we have been running for clients on Facebook. We have mostly been utilizing the Wildfire application which is a great tool for these. There are many others now that have sweepstakes applications that are very simple to use. Contests are a bit more complicated, but more apps are becoming available for these as well.

Overall I enjoyed the conference very much along with the chance to meet other women in my field. It's always great to get a slightly different perspective on marketing when being outside the U.S. Even though Toronto is closer to me here in Rochester, NY, than New York City, we tend to forget it is a different country. There were many big brands that were represented at the conference, mostly managing their Canadian marketing. I hope to be invited back next year.

Oh and BTW, I did get to enjoy the city a little bit. Went to a Blue Jays game and got to see the Boston Red Sox beat them. Go Sox! Yes, there were quite a few Red Sox fans in the stadium.