Effective Contests

I have become a non-fan of general posting contests, so I'm curious about alternatives.
What other contests could one run that are effective (somehow promotes or brings attention, and ultimately activity to the site, i.e. new active members) and worth competing for (not too difficult)?

What are some unique ideas, or anything other than "whoever makes the most posts wins" or "earn points by making posts; the one with the most points wins"?

 

OK, EVERYONE STOP POSTING!!!!!!

Forums are built on member turn around. You are going to have members that go to your forum for a specific "thing." And while those members are coming in, older members are getting bored and leaving.

I suggest that you add more "things" to attract more new members. Whether this is buying ad space on other sites, youtube videos, a downloads section, a blogging section,,,,,,.

Communities should be built around the community. Not what the members can get out of the community - such as prizes and other stuff.

Ok, everyone keep posting!!!

 

creative efforts (drawing, engineering lolsy things, etc), public promotion of the site, regional treasure hunts, etc

 

funny how most of my success has been methods that got people OFF of the board for a little bit

 

Ooh, regional treasure hunt; what a great idea for a local forum! But they would have to be required to work in teams, else they wouldn't tell anyone else about the treasure hunt.

 

well if you announce it on the site people will know

 

Maybe for a site such as this, instead of having people refer crappy members that don't stick around here, the contest could be to see who gets the most members/posts on their own forums? See who the better admin is.

 

How would that benefit my site though?

 

I think Michelle may be on to something, though - my only concern would be the redirection of traffic from the community holding the contest to those (meaning communities) of the members participating.

 

Require participants to make a post about participating in the contest with a link/advertising for your site.

 

Ah, so cross-promotion, more or less.

 

One thing I did on my old website (not my current one yet but it is something I am looking into doing) is an Amazing Race type thing - but over the internet.

Back in those days (Geez I am starting to feel old now I can say that) I had many friends who ran popular websites and what I did was together we set up 'The Race around the Internet'.

It was run kinda like the TV Shows - people came to my website to register their interest (about a month before the actual game) and then when things were organised we contacted them as the game is run in real time.

On the day the game started all of those who had registered their interest were sent an email with a starting point, then from there they raced around the internet going to different websites and doing different things on that website (just like the show we had a detour - where they had a choice between two things - and a road block - something they needed to do -) at the completion of each "leg" of the race the last people to enter a passworded board/chat room (password found by completing a task on one of the websites) were eliminated.

It doesn't have to be the last person on a large scale website you could allow like 20 places after 20 people have entered the passworded board/chat room the rest of the people get eliminated, in my game how it worked was once people were eliminated they were redirected to my board to discuss their experience, what they liked and didn't like about it, how it could be improved etc.

My friends websites helped as it allowed us to edit a couple pages to include passwords, or special pages with a riddle that they had to work out etc.

Mainly we had log in point each website or two and we were losing players all the time until we were left with the last three - two people got VIP Memberships (12 months worth) - while one (the winner) got $200 of iTunes gift vouchers.

This ended up as a fantastic start to my website as people continued to come to the website at one point it peaked at over 50k members and majority continued to post.

 

That's an interesting idea, especially if you have a whole network of sites to promote

 

Yeah I got abit off topic when I was explaining - but at that time a couple of my friends had their sites and we were all able to set special pages or special tasks up and so it helped all of our sites.

For a site like this it could be done with so many admins and sites being run - AA could charge like $5 or something (if it was about the money) for us admins to have our sites as part of the "RACE".

If AA (if they were the ones to run it) organised some neat prizes you would get admins and regular members from other sites interested in it (it is just abit of fun after all we ran it with 100 players) it could be good not just for AA but for the admins who decided to pay the $5 to be one of the "stops" in the race.

As some of these members taking part could like a couple of the sites they stumble upon during the race and could actually bookmark the site to look back at it later in the day after the race.

I had fun with it - it was awesome and helped our membership grow and posts about the comp and other competitions we decided to run bi-monthly.

 

Now that would really work for AA I think; a scavenger hunt among the many forums here with an entry fee! I don't think such a contest has been done before on any admin forum.

 

Well it was just a suggestion, a bit of fun for all as I think activity may drop off after this opening comp closes, however if they start planning and talking to forum owners etc they (AA Admins) could actually put together some great prizes and a great "RACE" and with some advertising around the internet world of a relatively unique competition it could keep some of the people already involved in this site active - and encourage new ones to come and join to take part in it.

Could boost activity as people talk in the build up to the race, people share their ideas/opinons on it, and once they are "eliminated" from the "race" they can share their thoughts on it.

Although it is taking focus away from Admin chat somewhat - it could be a fun thing to have - and show the internet world that AA is thinking outside the box and are open to suggestions.