Looking to spice up your promotions and make them more engaging? Random winner selection is a frequent topic in our articles, but today, we are examining the “Winner by Choice” approach, or voting contests. This method not only gets your audience involved but also fosters a sense of community, turning your contest into a lively social event.

Voting contest


What Is a Voting Contest?

The concept of a voting contest is pretty straightforward. You give your audience the power to vote for their favorite entry or contestant. This format works wonders for all sorts of contests—whether it’s the best photo or video submitted by participants, talent showcases, writing challenges, or even business competitions. Instead of having judges or organizers pick the winner, the community gets to make the call.

How Does It Work?

Here’s a typical process for running a voting contest:

🖼️ Registration of entries:
Participants submit their entries—this could be anything from photos and videos to essays or other creative works.

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 The audience and votes:
Decide on your voting system—how many votes (or points, or tickets) each voter can cast. Usually, everyone gets the same number of votes. It’s also crucial to lay out the rules for your promotion—who can participate, what’s allowed, and what’s off-limits.

✨ Voters assign their votes:
Once all entries are in, it’s time to vote. Voters can choose how to allocate their votes. They might decide to give all their votes to one favorite or spread them across several entries.

📅 Voting period:
Set a specific timeframe for voting. This could range from a few days to a week, a month, or even longer, depending on your contest.

🏆 The winner:
When the voting period wraps up, the entry with the most votes takes the prize. You can choose whether to reveal intermediate results or keep everything under wraps until you announce the finalist or winner.


Why Should You Consider a Voting Contest?

There are plenty of compelling reasons to opt for the voting contest method in your promotional efforts. Let’s dive into some of the key benefits:

Increased Engagement
One of the standout perks of community voting is how it actively involves people. Instead of just submitting their entries and waiting around, participants become part of the action. They share their submissions, promote themselves, and rally their friends and family to vote for them. Voters also feel more engaged because they know their opinions matter in the outcome.

This engagement extends beyond just casting votes. People start conversations about the contest, share their thoughts, post updates on social media, and encourage others to join in. This buzz can significantly enhance your contest’s visibility, drawing in more participants.

Fostering Community

Allowing your audience to pick the winner fosters a sense of community. Participants aren’t just in it for themselves; they support one another, share their entries, and vote for their favorites. This creates a more connected and collaborative atmosphere around your contest.

Take, for instance, a creative contest like a photo or video challenge. Participants are likely to comment on and share their favorite entries, leading to genuine interactions that help cultivate a strong and loyal community around your contest or brand.

Transparency and Fairness

When the community decides the winner, the process becomes inherently more transparent. Everyone can see how votes are being cast, reducing the chances of bias or favoritism from judges. This level of openness fosters trust and credibility, which is crucial if your contest is part of a marketing strategy or a community-building effort.

You can enhance this transparency even further by displaying results in real-time or at least sharing the final vote count. This way, participants can be assured that their votes were counted fairly.

Wider Reach and More Social Sharing

People tend to share things they feel a connection to, which is why contests that involve community voting often generate a lot of buzz on social media. As participants and voters get involved, they’re likely to share their votes and promote their favorite entries on their social platforms, boosting the visibility of your event. This can create a “viral” effect—when someone shares their favorite entry, it draws in more people to participate, vote, or even enter the contest themselves.

Healthy Competition

Contests that rely on voting introduce a fun element of healthy competition, making the experience more exciting for everyone involved. As the votes roll in, participants and voters can keep an eye on the progress and rally behind their favorites. This sense of suspense and excitement can really amp up the thrill of the whole experience.

How to Run a Fair and Successful Voting Contest

Running a voting contest might seem straightforward, but there are a few key points to consider to ensure it’s both fair and successful:

Set Clear Voting Rules

To keep things running smoothly and avoid any misunderstandings, it’s crucial to establish clear voting rules. Decide how many votes each person can cast, whether they’re allowed to vote for themselves, and how many votes can go to a single entry. By laying down these guidelines from the get-go, you’ll sidestep potential issues down the line.

Watch Out for Cheating or Manipulation

While voting contests are meant to be enjoyable and transparent, there’s always a chance that someone might try to game the system. For instance, participants could create fake accounts to vote for themselves, or groups might attempt to sway the results unfairly. To combat this, consider using online platforms that track IP addresses, implementing CAPTCHA systems, verifying entries, or limiting each person to just one vote. These measures can help keep the voting process fair and square.

Promote Your Contest

To maximize participation, you’ll want to promote your contest across your website, email newsletters, and social media channels. Make it as easy as possible for people to discover and join in on the fun. This is especially vital if you’re looking to boost traffic to your site or expand your community.

Encourage Participants to Share

One of the greatest advantages of a vote-based contest is its potential to go viral on social media. Encourage participants to share their entries and rally their friends and followers to vote. You might even consider offering bonus votes for social media shares or hosting a separate contest for the entry that garners the most votes from social media.

Use a User-Friendly Voting Platform

The voting experience should be straightforward and accessible. Ensure that the platform you choose makes it easy for people to cast their votes and clearly displays the results. Tools like voting widgets or dedicated contest platforms often come with features that allow you to customize the voting process and ensure everything runs without a hitch.

Terms and Conditions of a Voting Contest

When setting up the Terms and Conditions for a voting contest, here are some key points to consider:

Eligibility and Participation:

  • Who can join in?
    Think about age limits, where participants can be from, or if it’s for specific groups.
  • How many entries can each person submit?
    Is it just one entry per person, or can they submit more?
  • What are the rules for submissions?
    Consider file types, size limits, and any content restrictions. Are AI tools and generators permitted for creative submissions?
  • Are participants allowed to vote for their own entries?
    This needs to be clearly stated.
  • Can participants create multiple accounts to vote for themselves?
    This should definitely be prohibited.
  • What’s the timeline for submissions?
    Include the start and end dates and times.

Voting Process:

  • How many votes can each voter cast?
    Is it just one vote, or can they vote multiple times or distribute points? How many points/tickets each participant have and do all participants get the same amount of votes? If not, describe the key how to get the specific number of points (based on activity, revenue, segment, etc.)
  • Can voters split their votes among different entries?
    If so, how many votes can they allocate to each?
  • What’s the voting timeline?
    Make sure to specify the start and end dates and times.
  • What platform will be used for voting?
    Will it be a website, social media, or a third-party app?
  • How will the votes be counted and monitored?
    Transparency is crucial here.
  • Are there any rules about how votes can be cast?
    For example, one vote per IP address, email, or social media account.

Preventing Manipulation and Cheating:

  • Establish rules against creating fake accounts or using bots to skew the votes.
  • Implement measures to detect and prevent vote stacking or coordinated voting schemes.
  • The organizer should reserve the right to disqualify any entries or votes that seem suspicious.
  • What’s the plan for handling suspected fraud?
  • Consider using IP address tracking or other methods to ensure one vote per person.
  • Implement CAPTCHA systems to block bot voting.

Transparency and Fairness:

How will the voting results be shared? Will there be real-time updates or a final tally?
How will the winner be confirmed? For instance, will you contact them via email to verify their identity?
The organizer should have the right to review and audit the voting process.
What happens in the case of a tie? Will there be an additional voting round or will judges (or maybe our Random Picker) decide?

Contest Rules and Disclaimers:

  • The organizer reserves the right to change or even cancel the contest if needed.
  • Disclaimers about liability for any technical glitches or unexpected events.
  • Guidelines on how submitted entries can be used (like intellectual property rights and promotional purposes).
  • A privacy policy outlining how participant data will be collected and used.
  • Details about the prize and the process for awarding it.

When creating a voting contest, you should also be aware of intellectual property rights related to submitted entries and ensure you have clear guidelines on how these will be handled. And as usual – it’s important to consider data protection regulations relevant to your audience and the information you collect during the contest, such as email addresses or voting patterns. Transparency about how you will use and store this data is essential to maintain trust and comply with legal requirements.

Voting Contest Tools

Tools for submissions:

The right tool should support media uploads, a checkbox to agree with your Terms and Conditions and Data Processing policies, and fields for contact information, additional notes or comments, security measures, and any other fields you may need for the contest. Remember to check the upload limits.

  • Submittable
  • SweepWidget
  • Woobox

Tools for voting:

  • Jotform
  • StrawPoll
  • Doodle
  • VoteHub

Tools for winner announcement:

  • Company website
  • Social media: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, BlueSky, etc.

If you have experience running voting contests, please feel free to share your insights with us!