I have long felt that the “right” kind of contest will build community, increase loyalty, excite the membership and staff, and produce many positive long term results. I am the kind of guy that likes to try different things out and pull from ideas I see have worked or come close to working on other communities. Just yesterday I launched a new contest on Best Board built around generating new members through referrals.
This contest has some requirements which you can read about, but the idea was to not only pull in new members and get people talking about the forum, it was to prod the new membership to be active. I am hoping this will be one of the better contests I have run. The first day of the contest was a success, seeing a 50% increase in registrations and a 100% increase in posts. I will report back on how the contest performed in hindsight once we are finished.
On a side note, I also began a unique contest on Sprint Users in additional to the typical contests I have going. I am giving away a PPC 6700, one of the nicest Sprint phones offered, something my users lust after. The first time I did this contest back in October 2005, it netted 12,000+ posts and a lot of fun. We shall see if this one is on par. Have a great weekend!
Umm, is there any way to read about the contest *without* registering? Or is this the new way to encourage people to register?
When I follow your link, I get the ‘You are not logged in’ page, and cannot move past this.
I have made a referal contest in my webmaster forum before some time, but with no luck at all.
But I guess a large/active forum like yours will have better results than mine
Good luck with your contest.
Best of luck with the contest.