When contests get out the crazy in people

Running a contest for a brand on social media kind of makes you feel like Justin Bieber on his birthday.

All those days when you’ve been the one being all needy and cultivating content and scheming for ways to get more Likes, one contest and the tables turn. And while we <3 <3 <3 <3 the attention, there are always a few that cross the fine line between enthusiastic participation and being borderline creepy!!!!

While working in digital marketing over the past few years and my experience at MindShift Interactive, here are a few contest players I’ve come across:

The Attention Seeker

Ever known someone who can spin around any conversation in the world back to themselves? Here’s a participant that will comment on literally all your posts and tell you just how ‘cool’ they are and that you should make them WIN because they ‘simply are the best’!

The Clingy lover

Anybody who’s ever had one will sympathize with us! They private message you, comment on ten posts and like twenty, all in under 30 seconds. Overwhelmed much?!!

The Liar

We don’t mean to stereotype, but a 40 something, pretty straight looking married man that loves smacking on our lipsticks makes it a little unbelievable. Oh, and when they say the’ve answered first, but your timeline tells you otherwise!

The Desperado

“I’ll do anything for you!”

“I’ll die if I don’t win!”

NEED WE SAY MORE!!

TheOver-enthusiast

The one who will reply to your contest post over and over and over again, even though you’ve mentioned that only the first comment will be considered to win. Le sigh!

As creepy as all this may seem, we LOVE people participating in our contests even though some manage to turn the drama up a notch. The key remains towards creating contests that can rope in the right target audience, and that’s what we all strive to achieve. While I’ve pretty much summed up some of our worst case scenarios, if you think we’ve missed out another kind from this rare species, comment and warn us NOW!