Dana and Leslie both run bakeries on the bustling main street of their up-and-coming neighborhood—D’s Sweet Dreams, and Baked with Love by Leslie. To try to make each of their bakeries the most talked about in town, both business decide to run sweepstakes. D’s Sweet Dreams is offering a chance to win a cupcake a day for an entire year and Baked with Love by Leslie is offering a chance to win the birthday cake of your dreams.

Sounds like they’ve both got sweet prizes lined up, now let’s take a look at each shop’s strategy for hosting their sweepstakes to see who’s strategy takes the cake and which bakery becomes the most talked about in town.

D’s Sweet Dreams – Dana and her team went with a pretty simple setup. They advertised the sweepstakes on their social channels with a link to the entry page. Here, people could enter once a day until the sweepstakes ended with a random drawing for the (very lucky) winner. By making entry simple, Dana’s sweeps had several entries (real talk: who wouldn’t want a free cupcake a day for an entire year!?) and since the entry link was posted on the bakery’s social pages, they undoubtedly sparked a few conversations.

Baked with Love by Leslie – Leslie opted for a different approach. Like Dana, she had a page that people could visit each day for entries, but she also decided to allow entrants to earn entries for completing different activities. For example, anyone that visited the bakery was able to earn entries by posting pictures of their morning muffin on Instagram, (#MorningsWithLeslie). As a sweet surprise for participants, Leslie held a weekly drawing where someone won a free baked good of their choice. This sweeps strategy also resulted in several entries, but more importantly, a ton of social chatter.

So, if both got a lot of entries and both now have two very happy grand prize winners, who had the better strategy?

In the battle to become the most talked about, the bakery with the winning strategy was, without a doubt, Baked with Love by Leslie. Her strategy to have people earn entries by posting to social media started conversations across the major social channels, increasing her reach and getting her bakery and products in front of new audiences. Instead of having fans simply click a link to enter, Leslie got them actively engaged early on and kept them engaged throughout the contest with the weekly drawings. So while D’s Sweet Dreams may have had a few social conversations here and there, Leslie’s strategy provided continued exposure for her bakery on social. But the real icing on the cake for Leslie is that by having fans create their own content, each post appeared as a personal recommendation to their friends and followers.

If your brand is thinking about running a sweepstakes to increase your reach and buzz on social, don’t be Dana. Instead, use Leslie’s recipe to make your sweepstakes an opportunity to connect with your fans and spark genuine conversations about your brand on social.

And as with all great bakers, Leslie had a secret ingredient that made her sweepstakes such a sweet success. She used SocialToaster. With SocialToaster, you’ll have the tools and support you need to host a fab sweepstakes that’ll have your fans actively engaging and talking about your brand on social. To get your sweepstakes started, give us a call today at 855.628.6278 or visit us here.