Review of Contest Burner WordPress Plug-in Software

Web-based contests have a huge upside potential, but are often a pain to manage if you do it manually.  Contest Burner is a WordPress plug-in that helps website owners manage contests on today’s social web.  I used the software as a beta tester, and decided to post a review of the software as well as discuss a few reasons why contests should be integrated in your online marketing.

Review of Contest Burner WordPress Plug-in Software

There has been a landslide of contest of late on the net, by big business and small business alike. Why are they doing it? Because contests are effective on multiple levels.  Done right, those participating love the opportunity for prizes, and site owners enjoy the benefits the contest brings.  Let’s talk about that for a moment.

The Potential Benefits of Contests to Your Site and Business

Running a contest takes forethought and planning, but it can be worth it, here are some of the main benefits site owners experience when running a contest.

• Traffic.  This is probably the most obvious benefit.  The very nature of the contest is that links to your site get posted all over the web which leads to people clicking thru and visiting your site.
• Links. This, of course, leads to more traffic, because links are a factor of measure when the search engines determine where to place your site on search results pages.
• Social Viral Buzz. Because contestants are encouraged to share information about the websites contest on social networks, it has the potential to create a lot of what I call socialized visitors.  Because they are being referred by a friend rather than a search engine there is a greater chance of conversion.
• Subscriber Loyalty. Subscribers and readers of the site will be grateful to you for providing the opportunity of getting great prizes, and this connection will (in most cases) increase their loyalty to you and your brand.

Again, there may be other benefits of hosting a contest, but these are the main ones.

What Contest Burner Does

Without software to help manage a contest, it can get unwieldy, as website owners deal with enrolling contestants, giving them unique links to share, and manually searching for and tabulating contestants points.

The Contest Burner WordPress plug-in software takes on these responsibilities and more by allowing website owners to setup the parameters of a contest (point values, number of prizes, contest time-frame),  while providing an interface for contestants to enroll, get links, and share the contest with their social network.  Contest Burner can then select contest winner(s) at the click of a button. Learn more about Contest Burner here (FYI: opt-in required)

Contest Burner Features

• WordPress Plug-in- Easy to install.
• Can create unlimited contests.
• Top Social Networks- Twitter, Facebook, YouTube integration with the ability to configure points for social actions on Facebook and YouTube.  Things like “Liking” your page on Facebook, posting on Facebook, comments in the Facebook comments widget, uploading a video on YouTube, comments, video responses, and subscribing to the YouTube channel.
• Other Social Sharing- There is a button that offers links to over 50 sites to share including an email inviter.
• Email Marketing Integration- The best way to communicate with contestants is via email, contest burner integrates with most major newsletter/auto-responder services.
• Flexible Points- Website owners can configure a point value for social actions like, tweeting, posting on Facebook, commenting on videos, uploading videos, referral sign-ups and comments submitted on site posts.
• Excluded Users- Specify the users to exclude from the contest. This is useful if you add users to the contest while testing.
• Bonus Points- Very useful if you want to award contestants for a contest within the contest, like the funniest contest tweet on Twitter, or the funniest response video competition on YouTube. You can adjust points up or down.
• Shortcodes- There is a list of available shortcodes for the plug-in which gives more control of how contest information is displayed.

Learn more about Contest Burner here (FYI: opt-in required)

Contest Burner Interface

If you are experienced using WordPress, you’ll likely find the time needed to understand and configure your contest to be minimal. Such was my experience, that said, even for WordPress newbies Contest Burner is simple to learn.

Please forgive the size of the screen shots below, I had to size it down so it would fit on the page.

Image 1: This calls out the management tabs across the top, as well as the start and end date section of the main screen.

Image 2: Twitter integration

Learn more about Contest Burner here (FYI: opt-in required)

My Experience with The Contest Burner Software

As I mentioned above I was a beta tester for this plug-in, that said, there were only a few hiccups along the way, and each one was addressed immediately by the software developers, they even added some features based on my input.  To be fair there were some server issues with my host which may have contributed to properly gathering points from YouTube for contestants. I may post an update on this after getting to the bottom of it.

One Thing To Be Aware of With Any Contest Software Like Contest Burner

My approach when running the contest was to be in regular communication via email with contestants.  This provided additional feedback that I didn’t expect, mostly positive.  One thing to be aware of with 3rd party sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, is that the software is subject to the availability of those sites to give the requested information.  It uses what is called an API (Application Programming Interface) to gather statistical data and award points to contestants.  If for some reason the API at YouTube is unavailable, the results will be delayed, contestants won’t see points reflected and they may get restless.

For this reason, it was advantageous to communicate regularly with contestants because when points were in question, they didn’t instantly question the validity of the contest.

A Word About the Contest Burner Sales Page

If you visit the sales page, be sure to bring your fire hydrant, at the time of this writing there are a lot of flames in the video.  While flames in sales videos may not be everyone’s style, it is a professional video, and Bill McIntosh provides some solid content in the videos. Learn more about Contest Burner here (FYI: opt-in required)

Image 3: Screen-shot of contest training video, learn how to run a contest effectively.

As you might guess, during the launch Bill is running a contest, loaded with prizes.  I’d encourage you to participate and learn how he does it.  Beyond that as someone who has worked with him, I think you’ll find the launch price of the Contest Burner software to be lower than you’d expect. Learn more about Contest Burner here (FYI: opt-in required)

Your turn: Questions about Contest Burner? Have your own experience with the product? Feedback on this review? Chime in below.