Looking for YouTube contest ideas you can adapt in order to grab audience’s attention and grow your YouTube channel?
Then you came to the right place!
In this article, you will find 6 YouTube contest ideas which will not only help you boost the engagement level, but also generate leads and drive traffic. What is more, it doesn’t matter what your niche or industry is, these ideas can be useful for every marketer.
Remember, if you feel that you are running out of ideas, then a little inspiration is always a great choice while you are brainstorming options for your YouTube contest.
Let’s start our discussion!
1. Sweepstakes
A sweepstake is a type of contest which allows you to provide your YouTube audience with a lot of different ways to join your contest. Actually, this is considered as an easiest and fastest way to increase engagement across multiple platforms.
During sweepstakes, if participants want to join your contest, they need to carry out several simple tasks. These tasks can be the following:
- Like or comment on a video;
- Subscribe to your YouTube channel;
- Follow your other social media account.
However, keep in mind that sweepstakes may be difficult to administer manually. Why? Because you should follow up all entries in order to determine a winner in the end of the contest. Is it possible to do it manually? Most likely yes, but trying to link all actions together to each participant, and consequently, draw a winner fairly will be difficult and require a lot of time.
So, while organizing a sweepstake, don’t forget about an opportunity to use the special apps that can assist you with your YouTube contest’s process. These apps will help you to track activity of each user who takes a participation in your contest and randomly select a winner. Overall, in this way you will ensure that every participant has a fair possibility to win.
Don’t miss: How to Run a Successful Contest on YouTube: 7 Steps
2. User-generated content contest
Organizing a user-generated video content contest is a powerful way to generate buzz around your brand and gain new YouTube channel’s subscribers.
So, don’t hesitate and ask your YouTube subscribers to create videos about your brand’s products or services and submit this content on their channels.
Moreover, provide participants with a unique hashtag. In this case, it will not only allow you to easily find all generated video content of users who are participating in your YouTube contest, but also choose your favorite video and announce it as a winner. In addition, while choosing a hashtag for your contest, make sure that it is original, short and related to the contest or your brand.
However, don’t forget to announce about the prize. It can be something from your brand’s products or even just a symbolic thing which will grab your audience’s attention and will be associated with your brand.
As according to social media studies, 80% of YouTube users affirm that videos help them to make decisions regarding their purchases. So, this type of contest can assist you in attracting more new customers and, consequently, boosting sales.
What is more, you may use this user-generated video content as the ideas for your future brand marketing.
3. Best caption contest
A caption contest is an easy and entertaining method to induce your YouTube subscribers to leave comments on your video.
Therefore, the main idea behind this type of YouTube contest is simple. Create and present an uncaptioned video to your YouTube audience and ask them to submit creative caption ideas in the comments’ box for a chance to win a prize.
While deciding on the best caption, you can ask your subscribers to vote or you can choose by yourself. Actually, it is better to mention how the winning caption will be selected. Then, you will be able to avoid some kind of miscommunication and dissatisfaction of users who didn’t win anything.
Overall, by encouraging your audience to comment on YouTube videos, you will increase engagement level of your content. In this case, the more engagement your videos receive, the higher your content and a whole YouTube channel is ranked in search results.
Don’t miss: How to Get More Engagement on Your YouTube Videos
4. Talent contest
Here the contest’s title speaks for itself.
Therefore, you can ask your audience to create their own videos of their talents and upload them.
It is advised to use a unique hashtag, which will help you to track all submissions from participants of your contest.
During announcement of your organized talent contest, present the prize that is relevant and appealing to your YouTube audience. In this way, you will be able to catch users’ attention, inspire them to take a participation in your contest and give them some value in return.
Furthermore, in order to declare the contest’s winner in more engaging way, you can create a video where you briefly review submitted videos for your YouTube talent contest and draw a winner.
However, if the contest’s rule was that other YouTube users should give their vote (like) for the video they liked the most, then you can show only 3 videos which received the most votes. The one that has got the biggest amount of likes should be announced as a winner.
5. Collaboration contest
A YouTube collaboration contest is when two or more YouTubers are partnering in order to host a contest. This type of contest is considered as the most popular and one of the most effective methods used by marketers to reach the bigger audience & turn them into subscribers.
So, if you want to create a YouTube collaboration contest, your task is to choose a popular YouTuber who operates in the same industry as yours and ask for a partnership.
Remember, another YouTuber you are collaborating with has to receive something in return, particularly if a contest is about your brand. In this case, while organizing a YouTube collaboration contest, ensure that a contest is profitable for both parties. You can agree to promote your YouTube partners’ brand, their YouTube channel or also make a collaborated video for their YouTube channel.
All in all, a YouTube collaboration contest helps both parties to reach a wider and new audience, encourage these users to become your channel’s subscribers or even customers and boost sales.
Don’t miss: How to Collaborate With YouTube Influencers: 7 Main Tips
6. Content suggestion contest
Why not create a YouTube contest in order to generate ideas for your next video?
In this case, ask your channel’s subscribers to write their opinions on what content they want to see in the future. In contest’s rules indicate that participants need to leave their thoughts in the comments’ section of your contest’s video and also let them know that the idea with the biggest amount of likes will be a winner.
Do you know what the best part of these content suggestion contests is? You don’t need to give a winner a particular prize. Why? Because applying an idea of content in your YouTube video can be counted as a reward for subscribers.
By organizing this contest, your YouTube subscribers get involved into your channel’s activity and you allow them to feel that you care about your audience’s opinion.
Don’t miss: 11 Best YouTube Video Content Ideas
Wrapping everything up, that’s all for this article!
6 different YouTube contest ideas were discussed in order to help you to increase your YouTube channel’s visibility, grow your subscribers’ base, boost engagement or even drive traffic to your brand’s website.
So, don’t doubt in efficiency of these YouTube contest’s ideas. Better, go and try one of them.
What YouTube contest idea would you like to try? Maybe you have already created a YouTube contest? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
