Contests for Content

This weekend we held a contest to give away five all-access passes to the Jacksonville Film Festival, generously donated to us by the hosts of the festival.

Contests are a good opportunity to collect customer-generated content (CGC or user-generated content, UGC).

We set this one up to get all the makings of a little blog article and media list. We emailed customers we know like movies (using Savannah by OrangeBoy to target customers who check out DVDs most often, and added in a list we have for our “Screening Room” program series) and asked them to email us back with their name, a favorite movie from the Library’s collection, and why others should watch that movie. We got a bunch of entries and the five winners’ movies spanned several types of film and had great reasons attached.

Now we’ll just take those recommendations, make a media list that people can click through to find the films, and just like that we’ll have a nice little blog article about films at the library. It’ll show off the collection, highlight our facility as a film venue, and focus on customers.

Hardly took any work for this. We were lucky to have a nice prize but it doesn’t have to be anything major. At a last job we used to make “movie night” packs to give away. Candy, microwave popcorn and movie tickets or Redbox gift cards. The cost is well worth the return.

Thanks for reading! Until tomorrow!