Running an online contest is one of the best ways we can promote our business’s social media pages. It is important to have fair criteria for judging these types of contests so that our customers don’t feel prejudiced against and so that we can promote the contest as a fair chance for everybody who enters.

Use Specific Criteria
The most important aspect of judging an online contest is the use of specific, objective criteria to determine the winner(s) of the contest. Criteria should never be vague or arbitrary, as that leaves too much room for judges to insert their personal biases into the judging process.

The best way to make sure that judging criteria is fair and objective is to choose three or four specific attributes and assign scores to them. For example, if your criterion includes the feasibility of an idea and the likelihood that the idea will be successful, score entries from one to four on each criterion.

Be Consistent
Your contest will most likely involve several judges. Make sure that the criterion is set up in such a way that multiple judges can score it in a consistent manner. Stay away from abstract concepts such as “originality,” which are scored subjectively. In addition, judges should compare their scores and should discuss any significant discrepancies in scores to ensure consistency.

Set up Criteria That Encourage Quality Submissions
Contests won’t be worthwhile if they generate a disproportionate number of low-quality submissions that just waste the judges’ time. We can avoid this problem by using criteria such as “clarity of thought,” which encourage high quality while remaining objective. Clarity of thought is a good criterion for most contests to include because it lets participants know that entries will be judged based on how clearly they are organized. This encourages participants to spend significant time on their submissions and leads to a higher overall quality of submissions.

Use a Scoring Rubric
As mentioned earlier, the easiest way to ensure judging remains consistent is to require judges to score each item. To make this task even easier, we can use a scoring rubric – a list of qualities each entry needs to score a particular value in a particular category. For example, if one of the criteria is “clarity of thought,” the scoring rubric can include specific qualities that lead to a score of four, three, two or one in this category.

Weight Criteria Unequally
When running a contest, we are usually looking for something specific. To further ensure that the winning entries are high-quality and useful, we can weight the criteria unequally. For example, if you’re really looking for marketability, make that portion of the scoring rubric worth far more points than other aspects of the entry. By weighting criteria unequally, we let participants know what’s most important to us and encourage entries that meet these needs.

Running a contest can be challenging, but the rewards are worth it. We can acquire valuable ideas or products as a result of hosting a contest, and our customers will be excited to have the chance to be part of our business, making them more likely to buy from us in the future. If you’d like help setting up your first contest, call us at (516) 365-3999 or contact us using by our online form.