The topic for this week is how to use a Facebook timeline contest to boost engagement. The agenda in 15 minutes, what are they, what are timeline contests, what are the benefits, how do they work, Q&A, and then we can all go home. What are timeline contests? Basically, timeline contests are contests that you can run on the timeline of your page. You just simply post an update, and in that update, maybe it's a status update or a photo, or you're essentially running the contest in that update, instead of a page app. Just a couple of examples here, what they look like is it says this is race for the fallen, contest, enter to win, answer correctly to win, and here's another one right here. So this is very, very straightforward. Leave a comment with what you want me to blog about. A random winner will get a copy of this, this book. So this is what we're talking about. Something that's less than 50 bucks, less than 20 even, very quick and easy to run on your Facebook page. Now this one is just captioned, this is just another idea, and I gave away a book. Why are we talking about doing timeline contests or doing anything like this in the first place? The reason why you want to look at timeline contests as one tactic or one tool in your toolbox on Facebook is because reach has declined dramatically. Reach has declined dramatically, and you could go to your Facebook page and maybe you look at your reach and the engagement on your post, and you might see, wow, over the past few months, it's actually declined. So Facebook is putting the squeeze on the newsfeed. They're basically really trying to get as much much exposure as they possibly can for promoted posts and sponsored posts, and weed out anything that it isn't highly interesting to Facebook user. But the way it works is, as you can collect entries by having users post on a page comment, like or page, collect entries by having users message of page, page, and you can utilize likes as a voting mechanism. Okay, so there's a link here to more information on what Facebook says about the timeline contests and what's appropriate and what's not. Click on that link and you'll be able to go there. Okay, now what are the benefits really quickly? Benefits are it's free, it's easy, it definitely will improve your newsfeed exposure, it'll definitely increase the engagement on your posts. Okay, so newsfeed exposure is reach. You're definitely going to reach more people with this post simply because you're going to have more engagement, more people interested in what you have to say, and over time, if you do this again and again and again as a regular part of your approach, you'll increase fan loyalty. Okay, so how do they work posting on your page, private messaging, liking a page post, commenting on a page post, and accumulating likes on posts or comments? Okay, and what you can't do, this is a no-no, you can't ask users to tag themselves in a photo that they're not pictured in. You can't ask users to share a photo or share a post either, so sharing does not count. All right, and you can't ask users to post something on a friend's timeline or on their own personal timeline. Okay, click on the link, there's a little bit more information. Agura Pulse has a free tool that will help you I guess stay organized and randomly select likes and comments and there's information right here you can click on it, but basically it helps you kind of manage the Facebook timeline contest a little bit better in terms of selecting the winner. And how do you get started? These are some examples, so like this post to enter, comment on the post to enter, answer a question correctly to enter, caption a photo, like I said before I should do that earlier, post a photo to be entered. Okay, so post a photo of what of you and your dog on our Facebook page and you'll be entered. Okay, three tips. Now these are important. First thing, you have to be really clear about your goals. So the real benefit of this approach is exposure in the newsfeed. All right, it's not you're not going to acquire emails with it. Okay, you won't be able to do any sort of database mining at all because all you're depending on is likes, comments, and chairs, but if your goal is to get increased newsfeed exposure and engagement, this is the way to go. Super easy to do. Don't overdo it with the prize either so you don't have to go crazy. Something really small, but make sure it's relevant. Okay, don't just say here's an Amazon gift card because that kind of comes across as lazy, you know, not much thought behind that. Come up with something that's really creative, unique, something that you might find on Etsy, for example. But you know, it's it's got to be relevant. You can't just be something like an iPad. Of course, not going to be an iPad or an Amazon gift card. You get the idea about that. Okay, and the finally don't forget to share the results after. So hey, so and so one. Thanks a lot. And here's that caption. And then this, you know, here's the caption on the photo. Here's what it looks like. And I get another post on my Facebook page that I don't have to worry about, right? Following up on the contest. Okay, so now I'm just going to open it up for Q&A.