Think Social | Don't Blink

I admit it, I am not much of a dog guy. I grew up in a cat family. I also had a couple bad experiences with dogs when I was younger and I do get turned off by how some owners take care of (or don’t take care of) their hounds. That doesn’t mean I hate dogs or that I dislike living in a city where dogs are just about as numerous and carry as many rights as the people living it. It just means I am not going to go out of my way to pet the dog that someone decides to bring into the grocery store.

This week though I have become a dog fan. The people closest to me who just read that last sentence spit out their coffee. That’s right, this week I have definitely warmed up to dogs and have looked at many and thought “What a cute, nice looking dog.” Yes, I know, now I have to explain.

This week, believe it or not, I am a dog fan!!

Remember last month how I talked about a company called Think Social and how we at Grizzly Athletics are partnering with them to introduce fun, organized, and branded social media contests? I wrote about the initial campaign we did with them. Just with Grizzly Athletics benefiting, we did a Griz Facebook fan photo contest. The week-long promotion was a great success and we experienced huge engagement numbers and a solid increase in likes to our page. After that initial run through we have done several other Think Social contests with our corporate sponsors. Basically I promote the sponsor’s contest on our Grizzly Athletics Facebook page and then our fans enter it by liking the Facebook page of the corporate sponsor. These have all proved successful as well.

However, this week a new contest has come to life that has set a whole new standard. Let me introduce to you the Grizzly Athletics/Holiday Inn World’s Best Dog contest. The rules are simple and rewards are great. Fans simply have to submit a picture of their dog and the canine that receives the most votes at the end of the week wins a pretty amazing prize package for its owner. In fact, the runner up and third place dog also win sweet prize packages for their owners as well.

This week we are running the Grizzly/Holiday Inn World’s Best Dog Contest.

So while the prize packages and the contest itself are pretty cool, what has really set this thing apart has been the response. As I alluded to above, dogs pretty much run things in this town and you won’t find too many households that don’t have one or two of them so as you can imagine, many people were eligible to enter this contest. With the popular subject and with the power of Griz Social Media, this promotion has rocked thus far. With over 100 hounds entered, everyone has a horse (I mean dog) in the race.

As of right now, this is the first place dog, Jake.

By far my favorite part of this deal has been looking at the submissions. Some of the dogs are adorable. I think the maroon and silver that most of them are decked out in definitely adds a likeability factor to them. I am not kidding though, many of the owners who have submitted pictures have gone all out in dressing their dogs in Griz gear from nose to tail. Many have hats on, most are rocking Griz shirts, some are donning necklaces, and all have a unique trait that differentiates them from all the other dogs. Some owners have set up Griz themed backdrops around their dogs. All different breeds and sizes of dogs are represented and it just makes it a lot of fun.

So far this has been my favorite submission. This dog is named Aiden.

This has been a fun contest to promote. Our fans have enjoyed it and it has given me a bunch of material to share with our audience. I am now able to post picture of a dog decked out in Griz gear for the next 100 days straight if I wanted to and I guarantee that our fans would continue to press that “like” button and comment on how cute the newest dog is.

This is Franklin and he is another one of my favorite submissions.

Kudos to the Holiday Inn on pairing two things together that Missoulians might like more than anything: the Griz and dogs. This fantastic combination has made for a killer social media contest with a great level of engagement. I encourage you to check out all the submissions by clicking here. I will leave you with the question we ask whenever one of our players intercepts a pass inside Washington-Grizzly Stadium…WHO LET THE DOGS OUT?!?!!? Don’t Blink.

A little over a year ago, I participated in a social media contest that consumed my life and brought out my competitive juices. Northern Quest, a resort in my former home of Spokane, held a photo contest in honor of Mother’s Day. The resort asked its social media audience to submit a photo of themselves with their mom to the Northern Quest Facebook page. Once a photo was submitted, it was eligible to get likes and comments. At the end of the weeklong contest, the photo with the most combined likes and comments would get a spa package for their mom that included a night stay in the resort’s ultra fancy hotel.

I went absolutely nuts putting all of my energy into winning this contest. After much campaigning, pleading, and schmoozing with pretty much everyone I knew who had a Facebook account, I ultimately held off the large field and won the prize package for my mom.

This is the photo I submitted that won the prize package.

So after having a great experience competing in a fan-voted social media picture contest, you can definitely bet that I am loving the fact that this week I get to run one! On Monday, Grizzly Athletics presented the #GoGriz Photo Contest. Our fans simply have to submit a photo that in some way incorporates our official hash tag, #GoGriz, and then hope that their photo garners the most votes possible. Sounds easy, right?

Well in theory running a contest like this sounds very simple but there actually is a lot of work on the backend that takes place. I am talking about behind the scenes type work such as making sure everyone follows the rules, offering a clear and functioning voting platform, crowning a legitimate champion, and compiling information from our Facebook fans that will in turn help us better serve them through Grizzly Athletics.

Enter a key player in this whole process…Think Social. Because of our contract with our third party rights holder (Grizzly Sports Properties) we have the luxury of teaming with some pretty cool partners. One of these partners is Think Social, a company that specializes in running Facebook contests for intercollegiate athletics departments. Along with our associate athletic director, the two of us sat down in a call with Think Social and we told them exactly what we wanted to accomplish with this contest. I wanted to continue to raise awareness for our hash tag, offer our fans another great social media promotion, and increase our like count on our main Facebook page. Our associate AD wanted to spread word that season tickets are still available, compile a database of some of our loyal fans, and see if this platform could help us in the future. Think Social designed the contest with our goals in mind and only two days into the contest I can proudly say that we have either already reached or are close to reaching them all (contest ends on Monday).

While Think Social facilitates the contest, I get to do all the marketing for it. This includes spreading the word throughout all of Griz Nation, generating enthusiasm for the campaign, coming up with creative ways to get people to submit photos, updating fans on a daily basis, and showcasing the great submissions that our fans turn in. Definitely a cool job.

This is currently the second place photo in the contest (122 votes).

But enough of this long story on how the contest came to be. What I really want to do in this blog post is tell you to enter the contest!! Why am I telling you to do this? One reason of course is because it is very simple. Another reason is because it is fun to submit a photo and see who will vote for it, closest friends and total strangers both included. A big reason is also because of the prize given to the person who submits the photo that gets the most votes: 2 Griz football season tickets (pretty much the most coveted thing in the state)!! But the main reason why you should enter is because you can WIN!

I am convinced that any of my Facebook contacts who have at least 500 friends on the network and who have half a brain about how social media works can pull this victory off. All it takes is hard work and some creativity. If you are reading this right now I have faith that you could submit a photo in the next two minutes and by 8 a.m. tomorrow morning you could pull into first place, right ahead of the person who has 140 or some odd votes right now. It just takes some drive and some innovativeness to do it. I know you all are capable of doing it.

So what are you waiting for? Click here and submit your photo. Just make sure to incorporate the #GoGriz hash tag and remember that using babies or cute cats always seems to work best. Go Griz! Don’t Blink.