Hi Bob,
Thank you for such a thoughtful reply and yes it is helpful.
Hi Aileen,
Glad it was helpful.
Just to make clear again, I'm not pretending to be any sort of authority on this, and these are just my personal thoughts, so I don't know if any of my suggestions would help in practise.
I'm trying to think about it from the point of view of someone who isn't usually massively engaged in this type of activity.
And because voting contests aren't something that I'm often drawn to, I can speak with some personal experience.
I
did get involved in two large contests over the past year, but I can't remember what they were now. (I have a useless brain for details!)
There was a heck of a lot of activity on the forum in relation to them, and I was drawn in, and I even used a new facebook account.
All the info and activity on the forum was instrumental in getting me involved.
So I think you need to make a big splash on the forum - with eye catching thread titles that draw people in.
If I am reading this correctly, your first 2 questions are referring to the company (ie. Vivint). You would want to know something about them. Would a link to the explanation on their site be sufficient (they always explain why they are giving away the money) or would you want someone to write this up for you if you were a non-voter? What do you think?
Yes, that's right... I didn't understand why Vivint (or whoever) were giving away money... A link directly to the explanation would have been fine, just to satisfy my curiosity... It wouldn't need writing up.
In past contests, including current ones, on other forums I have provided the answers to the above questions as well as the end date & time of the voting and step-by-step voting instructions for those who aren't very computer literate.
Yes, it was all of this sort of info that drew me into the couple of contests that i've been involved with, and made it easy and interesting for me to get involved.
And it was the ongoing updates that kept me involved.
I know that I found the daily voting counts of our charities and our main competition very helpful during the Vivint contest although I know it was a HUGE effort. I think that should be done with each big contest. Too much work for the smaller ones like Citigo especially if we are doing well. Do you think that reminders to vote, on the forums not personal emails, are helpful?
Yes, daily updates, constant reminders, repeating of information, and lots of encouragement on the forum were definitely essential to keep me engaged.
I don't think there can be too much encouragement on the forum, because people can opt in and out as they wish, but you would need to be more sensitive about bombarding people with emails, unless they specifically opt in to receiving daily or weekly reminders for example. Some people might like to get daily reminders, but others would find it intrusive. If you do emails, then it should be very easy for people to opt in and out of receiving them, whenever they want to.
And updates in the standings for people who may not want to check for themselves even if there is a leaderboard?
I'm not sure what you mean here?
Again, more knowledge of the charity seeking the money comes up. Perhaps some promotion is needed not only during the contest but before the contest of the charity itself and perhaps what the upcoming project is? We certainly let people know we needed the money to pay for the conference during the Vivint contest (and look what came out of that conference!!
).
There are always going to be a good many people who aren't very familiar with your charity and exactly what you do. So I think this piece of the jigsaw puzzle is essential in order to capture people's imaginations.
I think that details about the charity and what the money will be used for, and why it will benefit the community, will be what motivates people to get involved in the first place.
