[HOW TO] Make Viral Contest Landing Pages with Social Media Widgets

I thought I’d share a simple technique we use at Unbounce for making viral landing pages for contests. It’s a pretty straightforward process:

1. Create a landing page offering a contest prize suitable for your target market
2. Add Facebook & Twitter widgets to facilitate sharing
3. Add a simple one field email collection form
4. The viral part: Require that entrants use your selected social sharing devices in order to enter the contest
5. Specify that email is required to notify the winner
6. Do a random draw to determine your winner(s)
7. Notify winners via your new email list and include an extra promotional offer

An example

Our latest contest is to give away a free $600 conference pass to the Landing Page Success Seminar. Check it out (and enter if you like) and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Which Social Widgets Should You Use?

In the example above I used two widgets:

• Facebook Like Box: This allows you to acquire new fans for your Facebook page. The widget in question also provides an element of social proof by showing your fan count and some photos of your fans. You can customize this widget and grab the embeddable code for it from the Facebook share section.
• Twitter “Tweet This” Box: This is the widget that can make your contest viral. It requires that you set up a Twitter @Anywhere app (instructions for how to do it with Unbounce here). Now as part of the contest entry, people retweet your message and a link back to the contest page, driving more traffic to your contest and extending your reach.

Simple and effective. Give it a try.

A little about the online conference from the landing page

The conference pass we’re giving away on the example landing page is for the Landing Page Success Seminar.

Enter to win a $600 online conference pass

The Landing Page Success Seminar is going to be a great place to be if you’re into using landing pages and improving your conversion rate. The list of speakers is incredible. Here’s a quick highlight of who’s running a workshop:

• Bryan Eisenberg: is a professional marketing speaker and best selling author.
• Chris Goward: is the CEO of Wider Funnel, a company specializing in conversion rate optimization.
• Trevor Claiborne: is the Product Marketing Manager for Google Analytics & Website Optimizer.
• Scott Brinker: is the co-founder, president and CTO of Ion Interactive, a kick-ass enterprise landing page solution.
• Jim Sterne: is an international speaker and conversion metrics expert.
• Brian Clark: runs the awesome blog Copyblogger which has a great section on landing pages.
• Anna Talerico: is the executive vice president of Ion Interactive.
• Lance Loveday: is the CEO of Closed Loop Marketing.
• David Cancel: is the CEO of Performable, an analytics startup.
• Ben Jesson: is the CEO of UK optimizers Conversion Rate Experts.
• Connie Stack: is a marketing entrepreneur from WordStream.
• Bill Leake: is the CEO of Apogee Results.
• Raquel Hirsch: is a conversion optimization expert and co-founder of Wider Funnel.
• Brian Massey: is the Conversion Scientist and wears a white lab coat!
• Noran El-Shinnawy: is an Internet Marketing Manager at Acquisio.
• Kipp Bodnar: leads HubSpot’s content marketing team.
• Byron White: is the founder and Chief Idea Officer of ideaLaunch, a content marketing agency.

Unbounce CEO Rick Perreault and I will also be running a workshop at the start of the conference.

Enter to win a $600 online conference pass

— Oli Gardner