Contest Management from Strutta
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Online contests are a great way to boost community engagement on your website, blog, or general online presence. I’m noticing photo and video contests are on the rise lately however they’re pretty much all over the place.
The current options are email a photo (but what about file size limit), or submit a Facebook photo (but what about account privacy setting limits), or add photos to a Flickr group (but what about those without accounts). I understand that content creators should be able to maintain the rights to their images etc. so I’m all in favour of Flickr photo contests, however if you’re going to go big, seek out participants, voters, and run a really cool contest in general, you should be using Strutta.
It takes about 10 minutes (maximum) to setup a Strutta contest page. Using their platform you can choose a template for your contest site, host it off your own site or theirs, upload rules, and setup voting basics such as star-ratings or judge profiles. The best part is that it’s FREE. Yes, totally free but with bonus options you can add on as you like, for various fees.
I used Strutta in February for the Vancouver Twestival video competition and that was before it even had all the bells and whistles available today. They also have a handful of other contests running right now that you can check out.
Now, I’ve been friends with the folks at Strutta for years and they probably have no idea I’m writing this blog post. I just absolutely felt there was a need to inform companies and individuals that services like this do exist. They’re local, they’re a great group of people, and it won’t cost you all that much (if anything) to run an awesome photo or video contest with them.
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Hey thanks Rebecca!
We’re proud to power some of your contests, and we look forward to doing another for Twestival. When do we start??
Cheers,
Jordan
(and the rest of the Struta gang))
I like the look of Strutta although doesnt look like its promotion tools are as good as memelabe – http://www.memelabs.com.
We used that platform for one competition (a photo contest but the platform does mostly video) and the ability for entrants to push their entries out to their friends was key in driving traffic and awareness.
@Chris The folks at Memelabs are great (and local) as well.
I’ve had more experience using Strutta and find it’s a nice, simple way for people to get started in online contests – hence the post 🙂
Thanks for the post, Rebecca!
@Chris, true, having participants who actively promote their entries is definitely key in driving traffic and awareness for online contests.
Strutta has actually recently added tools to allow for embedding and sharing on popular social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace to encourage all to join the fun.
Play on!
I would also like to add that while we do love and respect our friends from the up the street, we’re happy to be subjected to a side-by-side comparison of features and cost.Our do-it-yourself solution sets us apart, for example.
But you’re right about the promotional features, Chris. I prefer our old “Share” tools over our most recent options, and you can bet we’ll address that very soon, and make the new changes available site-wide. Meantime, as Tina mentioned, you can share your entry’s unique link with the tool.
Cheers,
Jordan
I have no experience using Memelabs to run a contest – so I can’t say anything there. Though I know many of Memelabs team and they are pretty fantastic. I am certain they do fantastic work.
Now, I did have the opportunity to try Strutta when I ran the Decor Hell contest & found it super easy to use – and to contact participants and winners.
This post has been really helpful to me. Found you in a Google search looking for contest management software. Thanks so much for taking the time to share your opinion, I’ve already sent Strutta an inquiry. Cheers! I’ll report back with how it goes.
I see that this is an old post…in terms of internet time anyway.
I have been researching over the past several months various contest platforms. Truthfully, I just found about both Meme and Strutta today. I must say that they both look impressive, however Strutta looks a little more intuitive. I’m not sure about cost comparison because I’m still waiting to hear back from Meme. I would like to see a side by side comparison. Actually, I’d like to throw YouTube’s new Contest Platform in the mix as well. They’re so big they may end up just squashing the competition.