Last fall, Missouri State began its search for the next Fan of the Year. Building on its debut in 2011, this year’s contest required student super fans to submit a photo showcasing their ultimate fan-ness. Then, these photos were voted on by the Missouri State community to select the winner.
Planning the contest
The goal of this contest was to promote school spirit and honor the un-sung heroes in the stands. To expand the contest from the year before, we wanted to promote the contest more campus-wide and to provide a more comprehensive prize package.
Our first step was to schedule a meeting with representatives from University units with a vested interested in athletics and student life:
- Athletics, athletics communications and marketing
- The Bookstore
- Maroon Madness
- Student engagement
- University marketing
From this meeting, we prepared for the contest by developing its Web presence and finalizing its procedures:
- Finalized a timeline that allowed for photo submissions from Oct. 17-Jan. 20 and voting from Jan. 23-Feb. 10
- Created images for promotion
- Developed the website
- Modified the YouTube promotion video
Promoting the contest
Once the Web presence for the contest was developed, we promoted both the contest’s photo submission and voting stages via the following:
- Missouri State Twitter
- Missouri State Facebook
- Go Maroon tab
- YouTube
- The current students page
- Athletic games
- MissouriStateBears.com
- The Missouri State Bookstore social media
- PSU digital signage
- Other University partners’ social media
- Each contestant in the contest
Picking the winner
Although photo submission occurred through our GoMaroon.com website, voting for the Fan of the Year winner was conducted through Facebook in three progressive rounds:
- Developed a Fan of the Year voting tab
- Used a redirect [/fanoftheyearvote] to connect people with the most up-to-date voting round
- Monitored voting and addressed any concerns or issues with the application
- Tallied approximately 1700 total votes across all three rounds
David Pottgen, a senior accounting student, won the Fan of the Year contest. His prize package to date includes:
- A $500 gift card to the Bookstore
- Four passes into the Prime Overtime Club
- Four Ovations food vouchers
- Halftime recognition at the Bears vs. Bradley game Feb. 12
- Tickets to a Bears baseball game
- Tickets to an Ice Bears game
- A behind-the-scenes tour during a football game
- A YouTube feature video.
[youTubeVideo url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reaxynUUJQg”]
Lessons learned
From this contest, we learned that:
- Collaboration is a great way to spread the word campus-wide. Consider providing your partners with tools and examples of posts or tweets to make spreading the word that much easier.
- Talk about it and talk about it often. It’s easy to think you are becoming a broken record, but tweets and status updates fade away from view quickly in the social media world.
- Research the Facebook promotion guidelines to ensure your contest follows the rules and won’t harm the future of your Facebook page.
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