Have you been having trouble attracting people to your Facebook page? Whether you’re looking for new followers or hoping to engage more with your existing fans, a contest is a great way bring your brand’s online presence back to life. There are lots of types of contests that are easy to implement, so here’s our advice on finding the right competition to help revive your brand’s online presence.

User Voting

Creating a voting competition is easy for you to make, easy for users to participate in, and a great way to get things going on your page. Put two different products, models or styles head to head and gain insights on what your customers prefer. It may not be the best tactic to target new followers specifically, but it is a fun way to get audiences excited about your content and active on your page.

If you want to be even more interactive and don’t mind the extra effort, hold a photo contest. Ask users to submit their own photos that are relevant to your brand, choose the best and have your Facebook fans vote for a winner. Choose your participants carefully though, because an enthusiastic winner could be a huge boost in shares. (But remember, Facebook requires that you announce the winner off of facebook, i.e. via e-mail)

We recently helped Fabuleash launch their own photo competition, the Bark Off, where each week fans vote for the cuter pup. The winning dog gets a spot on the coveted cover photo, as well as a free FabuLeash!

Sweepstakes

In a Facebook sweepstakes competition, participants enter their email addresses and the winner is chosen at random on a specific date. Whether you want to choose just one winner, or 1,000 a week, a sweepstakes is an easy way to boost engagement and get new fans excited about your brand. A sweepstakes competition might create some online buzz, and you can keep it running until you hit a target number of new fans. Also, remember to choose an appropriate prize depending on how many winners you’ll have.

Quizzes

Quizzes entice new followers to participate with the offer of a cool variety of prizes to the highest scorers. It’s engaging, fun, allows you to collect contact information and promotes sharing! To make it even more memorable, why not create a personality test? Have people find out which version of your product is a best fit for them. Hopefully it will be such a perfect fit that they’ll want to tell their friends about it too!

All sounds like too much effort?

If you don’t think you can budget the time to manage an ongoing Facebook competition, revive your brand’s activity by just asking your fans some fun question games. Write a sentence and have them to fill in the blank with creative answers. Have people tell their favorite moment/story/aspect of your product. The possibilities are endless, and will easily get more people commenting and liking your posts. If you’re interested in this, please DON’T FORGET that Facebook Contest Terms forbids you from awarding prizes for questions answered in the comment section, so make sure you carefully read those terms before creating your own formal competition.

For more on how to make sure these contests work and engage genuine fans, check out Social Media Examiner’s tips.