In November I talked about Sephora’s portfolio of social media contests, including its Pinterest #SephoraSweeps wish list contest. Users could follow the company’s boards, “Holiday: 40 Days of Wishes” and “Sephora Sweepstakes,” for a chance to win any makeup of their choice. A lot of business Pinterest contests require users to follow a company’s Pinterest page, create a board based on the campaign and pin/re-pin with designated hashtags.
Unlike Sephora’s sweepstakes boards that were only really live for the duration of the contest, AMC Theatres has a board on its Pinterest page called “AMC Giveaways” that updates with giveaways as they happen. Opportunities include winning a prize pack from box office movies, signed posters, Blu-Ray DVD sets, a year’s worth of free movies from AMC, autographed director’s chairs and more. Follow AMC Giveaways to stay up-to-date on goodies from your favorite movies.
What I really like about Pinterest campaigns is the opportunity for companies to go above and beyond the traditional, “Enter to Win”-type contests. Kotex, the feminine health and hygiene provider, is a great example of that. In March 2012, the company created a campaign called “Woman’s Inspiration Day.” It located 50 inspiring Pinterest female users and sent them a personalized kit based on what they pin. From 50 packages sent, there were 2,284 social media interactions and 694,853 total impressions. Check out the video:
Contests Happening Now
Ultimate Travel Companion
Condé Nast’s Traveler magazine is hosting a Pinterest contest for a chance to win one of three Sony NEX-5RK/B cameras, including one grand prize package with a zoom lens and a camera case. The “Ultimate Travel Companion” contest requires users to create an original Pinterest board representing the inspiration for your next must-see destination, pin at least two items from the Condé Nast Traveler and Sony Electronics Pinterest pages, tag each item and your board with #travelcompanion and fill out the contest entry form. The deadline for the contest is January 22.
Connected Living Room
In Mashable’s first Pinterest contest, it wants users to create a board filled with things they want in their ultimate living room. Users create a board called, “Connected Living Room,” and pin anything they want. Winners could win one of three brand new gadgets, including the new 47” LG Google TV, an LG Optimus G smartphone or an LG Touch10 monitor. Deadline for the contest is January 18.
New Year, New Room
The RoomPlace is giving away a $500 gift card and five $100 gift cards to The RoomPlace. Enter on the company’s Facebook page, follow the company on Pinterest and create a “New Year, New Room” board and re-pin at least five items from The RoomPlace. Winners will be chosen based on the most likes and comments on Pinterest. The contest runs from January 14 to January 28.
To stay updated on more Pinterest contests, you can search “Pinterest contest” pins on the site, or follow one of the hundreds of boards available. Good luck, and happy pinning! ]]>
According to Mark Risher, chief executive officer of anti-spam software company Impermium, spammers are responsible for creating as much as 40 percent of the accounts on popular social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Roughly 83 million accounts on Facebook are fake. Of that, 4.8 percent are duplicate accounts, 2.4 percent are user-misclassified and 1.5 percent are “undesirable” accounts. Facebook bans at least 20,000 accounts daily. Roughly 8 percent of messages sent on social networks are spam, and that number had doubled as of May 2012, which means it’s more than likely it’s gone up even more since then.
Pinterest is one social media site determined to get rid of these spam accounts. Users have complained about hacked accounts as spam was integrating into their Facebook and Twitter accounts. Since users often link the social networks together for cross-posting purposes, it’s easier for spam to leak in to the different sites.
“Keeping Pinterest authentic is vital to helping people discover the things they love. That’s why we’ve built a dedicated spam team that has been hard at work investigating reports and building systems that detect, remove and prevent spam,” the company said in a recent blog post.
Starting yesterday, Dec. 6, Pinterest started removing suspicious, fake or spammy accounts for good. For more than 90 percent of Pinterest accounts, it will be a loss of less than 10 followers. However, according to Pinterest, spammers tend to focus their attacks, and most of the bad accounts are following a relatively small number of legitimate accounts.
Image via Pinterest
Pinterest is taking everything it has learned from these spam accounts to implement new measures that will help keep bad accounts from being created in the first place. Its blocking and reporting features are one way to fight spam accounts.
Spam accounts can be more than just a nuisance. A story in Bloomberg Businessweek gave an example of Michelle Espinoza, a jewelry designer, who thought one photo was going to ruin her business. For 10 days in April, when anyone clicked on one image of her pearl cuff bracelets they were redirected to porn sites or downloading viruses. Hopefully the new action Pinterest is taking will help severely cut down on the annoyance of spam accounts on the social sharing site. ]]>Pinterest: Users can create their ultimate holiday beauty wishlist and enter to win a Sephora by OPI GelShine At-Home Gel Colour System. Follow Sephora at pinterest.com/sephora and pin any product from www.sephora.com with #SephoraSweeps in the description of the pin. Then just go to sweeps.pinfluencer.com/SephoraWish and enter your Pinterest username and e-mail for a chance to win. Users can enter daily from Nov. 12 to Dec. 21.
The company also partnered with Dobango for the Eye Heart Sephora contest. From Nov. 14 – 22, Dobango and Sephora will be giving out $20 Sephora gift cards daily and on Nov. 23 (Black Friday), they will give out the grand prize of more than $500 worth of eye makeup from Sephora. How do you win? All you need to do is use their site to upload up to three images of your favorite ways to do your eye makeup, then get friends to vote for entries by “liking” your entries on Pinterest. There are still four days left, so you can still enter to win either the daily gift cards or the grand prize!
Twitter: Sephora’s 12 Days of Wishful Tweeting sweepstakes allows users to tweet @Sephora any product from Sephora.com under $100 and include #SephoraWish for a chance to win your wish, plus one gift to a friend. These 12 days to tweet are Dec. 3 -14.
Facebook: Sephora Framework App on Sephora’s Facebook page allows user to take photos and create beautiful profile pictures and timeline cover images using Sephora’s selection of holiday and beauty-themed templates like eye line borders, fun nail polish and jewel-inspired finishes. Once the “Sephorized-cover story” is completed, users receive a special code for a deluxe sample of your choice to use on Sephora.com. The catch: The Facebook offer is available with a purchase of $25 or more.
In addition, users who like Sephora on Facebook will know what deals the store will have before Black Friday before others, who have to wait until the day of. The company is showing that being a Facebook fan is valuable, and it also creates buzz for customers to start talking about their Black Friday strategy.
Inside Social Commerce recently sat down with Bridget Dolan, vice president of interactive media at Sephora, about Sephora’s faith in social media, howi t gets virtual users to buy real products and why its social media efforts have paid off.
ISC: Sephora has been around for nearly a half century and does about a billion in sales annually. How do you get an already-established company to embrace social media?
Dolan: “It’s a little easier for us because Sephora’s only been in the U.S. for 14 years, so we launched a website 13 years ago around the same time we were launching physical stores. They are of equal importance, with the website as a digital billboard for our Sephora stores. Digital is in our DNA.
We have 325 stores in the U.S., but digital stores are one of our biggest focuses. We are committed to seeing how customers interact with each other, just as they would in a physical store.
In terms of focus, we see social media as the new way to market to our clients, to see emerging trends and to determine what works and what hits. Our clients have always found interesting ways to communicate to us, whether it is through reviews, BeautyTalk or Facebook. When we see new folks posting pictures on Instagram or pinning on Pinterest, we realize that they are using new, innovative ways to express themselves.”
Just like Laura Olin, who managed social media for the Obama election campaign, the key to successfully taking advantage of social media is to adapt to the different platforms. Dolan said Instagram is how it engages people, while Google+ is more about the growth of followers. “For each venue, we look at the mindset the client is in when they come to the platform,” she explained. ]]>