The Problem with Pinterest Promotions…

I’ve been on Pinterest for a while and have over 500 followers – most of these follow all my boards, which means every time I create a new board, it automatically has around 450 followers. So by default, when I enter a ‘Most Followers wins’ competition, I’m likely to win it. Even if my entry is absolute crud. Which, naturally, it never is – after all, I have 500 people watching and have a reputation to keep don’t I? *grin*

A ‘Most Followers Wins’ promotion is NOT fair – it’s akin to launching a creative Facebook comp and saying you’ll award the prize to the person with the most Facebook friends. Most people will see an entrant with 1,600 friends and not bother to enter. Also let’s distinguish here between this type of competition and the equally hideous ‘Most Likes wins’ or ‘Most Repins wins’ type, where people have to work for their votes (by ‘work’ of course I mean they have to spam friends, compers, strangers – or even buy votes if that’s too much effort!). In comparison, ‘Most followers wins’ comps require no effort at all – if you have lots of followers you’d pretty much clean up on every comp you entered without even asking anyone for a ‘Like’. When I complained about their ‘Red’s Great British Seaside’ competition, Red did say they’ll take my comments on board for future promotions – I’m sure they will do, particularly after I went on to win the prize!

So how can a promoter run a fair Pinterest comp? The most boring way is to do a simple Repin competition – but it’s not very easy to contact the winner (more on that later).

How about creating a board which will be judged? These are my favourite Pinterest comps, BUT the problem is that latecomers may search on a competition hashtag (or track back to your board from repins) and repin/copy ideas for their own entries. If entering a judged comp, you could do what I do and bookmark all the images you want to include and then create your board on the last day of the competition. I did this for the Start-Rite competition I won, and am doing the same for the current GPlan furniture comp (see link at the end of this post). For further reading on this topic check out this post about public competition entries over at the Spark and Fuse blog. Unfortunately there’s no way of keeping Pinterest boards private, so unless promoters decide to choose a winner at random there will always be the issue of ‘create a board’ judged Pinterest comps being unfair.

It can be hard to contact Pinterest winners too. Commenting on pins or sending Facebook messages is unreliable – it’s easy for Pinterest to block you for spamming, the winner might not be set up to receive Pinterest notifiations, and might not even know about the Facebook ‘Other’ inbox where the winning message will end up. With the recent Compers News Pinterest promotion, I had trouble contacting one of the 5 winners. I commented on his Pinterest board, messaged him on Facebook, tagged him on Facebook, and finally sent a Facebook friend request. He accepted my friend request 3 weeks after the closing date, by which time I’d chosen a replacement winner! It’s better and more reliable to ask entrants to register first either using an online form, by emailing their details, or by tweeting a link to their entry. You can then inform winners easily by email.

To summarise:

• Don’t reward popularity with a ‘Most followers wins’ prize
• Don’t encourage cheating with a ‘Most Likes wins’ prize
• Where a board is created, ask the entrants to register the link by email/web form/Twitter for ease of contact.
• Be aware that if the best board is chosen by judges, some later entrants may be taking their ideas and inspiration from early entries – make sure the winner is truly original!
• Consider picking a winner at random: to create a board takes time and effort, and most entries will be worthy winners

Here’s an example of a poorly thought out Pinterest competition from Karndean – win £2500 of flooring (closing date is 29th August) – check out full details here.

Karndean want you to register your details via email (Brownie points awarded for that), then they add you as a contributor to their community board. You pin one photo of Karndean flooring, then 4 of your own choosing. But a community board means that contributors can post anything they like, and it becomes ridiculously full of pins – I’ve seen companies hit by loads of spam using this method. And in this case, the floor with the most LIKEs wins – and we all know what will happen there. It’s easy to set up fake Pinterest accounts and even to pay for LIKEs – a quick Google throws up http://pinterestingservices.com/buy-pinterest-likes/ where you can buy 300 Likes (that would almost certainly be enough to win you the prize!) for just $39.99 via PayPal.

Karndean have included in the T&Cs “Any entrants deemed to have compromised any section of the administration, security, fairness or proper entry into the competition will be disqualified.” – so if it was suspected that someone had gained votes unfairly, they should be able to disqualify. But it’s still a poor way to run a promotion. Perhaps what Karndean should have done is what most promoters do – ask entrants to create their own board, pin from Karndean’s website, then add their other 4 pins. Karndean could either judge or choose at random from all entrants – they would have a LOT more entries then!

Don’t forget – if you’re not happy about the way a competition is being run, then let the promoter know why – they’ll probably get it right next time round!

To finish, here are a few current judged Pinterest comps to get your teeth into – good luck!

• Win a Back to School kit from AlexandAlexa.com
  http://www.theirlittleworld.com/2012/07/12/school-pinterest-competition/ – ends 24.8
• Win £3000 of GPlan Vintage furniture
  http://www.gplanvintage.co.uk/Inspiration/Competition/ – ends 31.8
• Win Kleenex goodies with your ‘Wipe Away Your Day’ story
  http://pinterest.com/pin/149111437633383566/ – 2 prizes weekly until 20.9