We provide many tools for you to run a successful campaign, but in the end the success of your promotion also depends on your own efforts. Here are a few things that you can do to give your campaign a better chance of success:

1) Offer an Attractive Prize

The more exciting your prize, the more interest your promotion will generate. High value prizes are of course very attractive, but we've found that the kind of prizes that work particularly well are those that money can't buy - such as a meeting with a celebrity, tickets to a limited-access event (e.g. a backstage pass at a show), or a limited edition or early release product etc. Of course, not every company has access to prizes of this nature, so offer whatever makes sense for your businesses, be it a free t-shirt for you and ten friends or a free teeth whitening treatment, but do be aware that the more attractive the prize, the more buzz your campaign is likely to generate.

2) Plant a Large Initial Seed

In order for the word about your campaign and your brand to spread, you need to encourage as many initial entries as possible. These initial entrants will invite their friends, who will invite their friends, and so on. But if nobody knows about your promotion in the first place, there will be no one to spread the word. Here are some ideas for generating initial entries to your campaign:

• Reach out to your existing customers via your website (e.g. paste a banner or link to your promotion on your homepage), newsletter, or company's social network page.
• Use your friends and contacts to get the ball rolling e.g. post a note about your promotion to your Facebook profile (and ask your friends to do the same) so that it will appear in your newsfeeds, mention your promotion in your Facebook status update etc
• Use advertising like Facebook's social ads. These cost as little as 14 cents per click and are easy to set up. For more info check out http://www.facebook.com/FacebookAds or email: aj@facebook.com

3) Encourage Sharing with Friends

For sweepstakes, encourage entrants to invite their friends to your promotion by offering prizes that can be shared. For example:

• Offer a prize that can be shared among multiple friends (e.g. event tickets, a party for you and your friends, merchandise) and ask contestants to invite the friends they wish to share the prize with. These friends are only eligible to share the prize if they enter the promotion.
• Offer a main prize and several smaller 'bonus' prizes. Tell contestants to invite the friends they would like to give the bonus prize to in the event they were to win.
• Offer a prize that can be shared between two and tell contestants that if any of the friends they invite wins, they'll get to share the prize too. Our promotion set-up wizard enables you to fully customize the message that appears on the friend invite page, so you can tailor your message to the nature of your campaign.

4) Provide Enough Time for the Word to Spread

You should run your promotion for at least a month (longer is better) so that there is sufficient time for the word of mouth to spread to as many people as possible

5) Make it Fun and Interesting

Make your campaign as fun and interesting as possible. If it's a user-generated contest, make sure the topic is something that's likely to generate lots of entries and that others are going to enjoy looking at the entries.