3 Lessons Learned Running A Community Contest

I'm writing this off the cuff so WHO KNOWS how many lessons we'll get. If you're ever planning on running any contests for yourself or a client, you'll probably want to read this. Here we go...

We just finished up a 36-ish hour contest here, which you can check in this post:

https://www.skool.com/fun/last-comment-wins

With a STUNNING 4 winners and nearly 300 comments, it's clear that Funny Money is the most FUN community on Skool, bar none.

Now, let's get this out of the way before we continue:

What was the POINT of running this contest?

To me, a successful 'Last Comment Wins' contest would do these things for our group:

✅ Encourage wallflowers to participate for the first time (Mission Accomplished)

✅ Give new members a reason to engage with the group, other than "hello my name is NAME." (Mission Accomplished)

✅ Bring out existing "superfans" and IDENTIFY new ones in order to help me maintain Big Fun Energy for the duration of the contest. (Mission Accomplished)

✅ Add some intrigue around the contest prizes, which may or may not be offered again, under different conditions to different people. (Mission Accomplished)

❌ Grow this group to 150 people (Mission FAILED)

Right now we're sitting at 76 members...and while that's wayyyy better than the ONE guy we started with two weeks ago, 76 is certainly not 150. Which brings me to...

🧠 Lesson 1: Don't do too many things at once.

The rules of this contest were simple:

I set a time in the near future, which I didn't reveal until an hour before the deadline.

Whoever's comment was LAST when time expired would win.

Simple.

However, I also introduced what I THOUGHT was a genius incentive for people to invite new members to the group.

If you go over to the "invite member" button in Skool (appearance varies depending on your screen size), you get a unique link. If someone signs up for this group using your link, I can see the connection.

The genius bonus incentive I mentioned was that if you invite one person to the group...

And EITHER you OR your friend win the contest...

You BOTH win.

Invite 9 people?

You have 10x the odds of winning, just like the time my mom, my two sisters and I all filled out slips of paper to win all of the Pokemon toys from Burger King.

We won.

However, as far as I can see, not a single member invited a friend to the group during our contest. That sucks!

I'm extremely charming and this group is full of useful and fun people, so it's probably not me...

Which means my rules were unclear, or invisible. If you participated in the contest, saw this bonus incentive, but didn't take advantage of it, would you mind telling me why? WHY?

Anyway, moving on...

🧠 Lesson 2: Expect everything to go wrong.

I wasn't super concerned about getting engagement with the contest from our existing peeps, because I had not one...but TWO "traffic firehoses" lined up, ready to soak us all with brand-new friends.

First, I turned on a Facebook ad campaign pushing the contest and its bonuses a couple days prior to the contest.

I've been running ads to the group already with mild success, so I thought cranking up the budget on an even MORE exciting offer (a contest!) would definitely work.

Second, I reactivated a tool I've used previously for LinkedIn outreach, with the intention of 'semi-automatically' pulling people into the group via DMs.

Two problems:

Facebook has been pooping a massive brick for the past few days, and my new ad campaign didn't even go live until the contest was almost over.

And...

Because I set up my LinkedIn automation thing on a new computer...and just left it alone...

I failed to notice that the app needed me to re-enter my password.

So it never contacted anyone.

🧠 Lesson 3: The contest went on too long.

I made the contest approximately 36 hours long in the hopes that Facebook would have enough time to infuse us with fresh blood, but that causes a few problems...

The biggest being, people don't have the energy for multiple days of festivities. I myself started feeling exhausted with hours left before the deadline, so I'd definitely make the next contest shorter.

I think 24 hours is plenty of time, and even 12 hours might work. Or shorter.

📌 Wrapping Up

Biggest takeaway...you're not gonna find the answer you're looking for daydreaming and gameplanning and doodling in your diary.

You have to go do stuff.

Even if NO ONE participated in this contest, I'd still be able to ask myself WHY nobody participated, which would ultimately help make this group better.

Special shoutout to our meme-posting superstars