I’m a sucker for the outdoors. Photos of any beach, mountain, forest, trail, whatever, always make me want to double-double tap on Instagram (really, they should allow you to double-like something for extra emphasis…).

I was scrolling through my Instagram feed the other day – through all the food, puppies, coffee concoctions, etc. – when I stopped at an amazing picture of Iceland. “AH, who is there?! I want to go!” … then I read the description.

It was a social media contest for Huckberry – Win the Trip of a Lifetime! The instructions were to repost pictures from the famous photographer – Chris Burkard – and tell them where you want to go (and with who) on their dime (out of 6 places they selected) – plus free gear for your journey! I entered of course (fingers crossed)… But, the point of this post is not to talk about how I entered, or reduce my chances of winning by telling you about this contest so you can enter… it’s two-fold:

When running a social media contest…

1. Understand the importance of creating visuals that break through the clutter. With any contest on social, you have a lot of noise to cut through. You can do this with help from sponsored posts, but not yet on Instagram. Huckberry was smart in conceptualizing a contest that is not only intriguing based on the prize, but captures attention of its target audience through captivating visuals.

2. Create a social contest that integrates across multiple platforms. Your target audiences may favor different social channels. Do yourself a favor and develop a campaign that has a low barrier to entry for your audience, and that has multiple ways to enter so you’re not excluding key targets. Huckberry allows entries from Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. While Twitter is not necessarily the most visual platform for such a visual contest, perhaps Huckberry’s goal was to grow its following on Twitter – or it sees a lot of engagement there already, and wanted to include those valuable followers in the contest.

One thing to keep in mind though is we DO NOT encourage creating a social media account on a new channel just to run a contest. Make sure you have a strategy in place if you launch a new account before launching a contest.

Kudos to Huckberry – hope the campaign is successful.

P.S. If anyone reading this enters (and wins), I expect you to tag me as your travel buddy! You’re welcome.