🚀 Ignite your growth: Discover 30+ new tools to get ahead in our new Ecwid Igniter. Learn more →
Everything you need to sell online

Set up an online store in minutes to sell on a website, social media, or marketplaces.

17 Activities That Will Wake Up Your Social Media Followers (And Lead Them to Your Store)

19 Activities That Will Wake Up Your Social Media Followers (And Lead Them to Your Store)

13 min read

Get ready for a little game. The game can make you money, because you play it with your customers.

If this gets a skeptical smile on your face, have a look at the portrait of a typical gamer:

Do you recognize your target audience?

People of all ages and jobs love to play games. This post explains how to add some Las Vegas spirit to your social media marketing to generate clicks and sales.

Active social media audiences can be divided into four psychological types:

Types of social media audiences

You can define the psychological type of your audience by looking closer at your customer persona. Below, we review every type and the activities that engage them the most.

How to sell online
Tips from e-commerce experts for small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs.
Please enter a valid email address

The Curious

These are previous “A” students and diligent learners. They love to get new knowledge, solve complex problems, and show off the progress on their timeline.

People of this type are unlikely to engage with giveaways. The best lure for them is intellectual games. The curious would check their answers 100 times before sharing them. That gives us the clue to attracting them to your store.

Publish a piece of content on your website (company’s history, a set of lifehacks, an interview with the founders and staff, a trends overview, a customer story, product test drives, and reviews). On your social media, hint that the correct answer for your contest activity can be found in the content. Clicks guaranteed!

If your website is really engaging, people of this psycho type won’t stop on one page only but will proceed to your product catalog. Hence the name, the curious.

Here are some of the games and contests the curious can’t resist to take part in.

Speaking Numbers

It’s likely that, since the launch of your business, you have stored a lot of milestone trophies that you would like to share with your customers.

That might be the launch date, the number of cups of coffee you’ve had working on your new collection, the number of visitors in your online store since opening, etc. The more lively those facts are, the more interesting it’ll be for your customers to guess them.

Put your numbers on a picture. The task is to match the numbers and what stands for them. Be sure to have the answers on your website.

Blog Preview

Don’t share the whole piece of content on social media. Show your main point, and let the curious discover the rest by their own.

Where to Buy/How to Order

It’s possible to play with less exciting, but important content as well. Ask your followers to count your points of sale, to create a route from any place in the city to your store, or to count all the possible options for placing an order. This way, you not only attract an audience to your online store, but you also bring them a step closer to the purchase.

Puzzles/Riddles

If your store has a wide product range or sells seasonal products, you can safely create different puzzles using product images. Such addictive tasks always provoke a lot of discussions among “A” students and those who guessed to find the correct answer on your website (for example, you could share the link to your “special offers” page and encrypt real prices in your puzzle).

Quiz

Don’t be afraid to ask questions, but don’t ask questions only on your product or company history. Pay attention to related upcoming holidays, events, fields of knowledge, memes — this will awaken your activity and increase engagement.

The Experts

These guys clearly know what they want and do not need extra proof that they are right. They are defiantly and reasonably defending their point of view. They are open to new activities only on the condition that they enter the pool of their interests and provide an extra reason to… well, show off.

How to involve the experts in the game? Just give them the opportunity to demonstrate their flawless taste or leave an expert review for your goods. The experts are easily involved in the process, but there is a danger behind it: they can become aggressive if you doubt their expertise.

Let’s see what games and contests can please them.

Choose Your Favorite

This is one of the simplest mechanics. Your customers go to your online store to pick a product they’d like to win. You can ask your participants to post the link to the comments and share this post on their page. It will get you free clicks from their friends.

Important: don’t forget to set a threshold for this contest (or use products from one category), otherwise you can bump into unexpected expenses when the winner is defined.

Choose a Gift for Your Friend

The experts are always careful about choosing something for their friends. It is them who can notably increase your time spent on page metrics. Ask them to add the link to the comments and to mention a friend. Define the winner randomly.

Their friends will notice your contest, as social media send notifications when someone is mentioned. It’s likely that they will go to your store to choose a gift in return.

Find the Best Match

Clothing and jewelry stores can showcase their assortment with this tactic. Publish a product image on social media and ask your followers to find the best match in your online store to finish the look.

The winner can be the person who scored the most likes or who suggested the most options.

Create a Look

A participant creates a look from the items they already bought in your store. Within this option, ask subscribers to attach links to products and post all this on their profile.

Alternatively, you could ask them to create a look from the products they would like to have. In this case, you can promise the whole look as a prize to the winner.

Leave a Review

If you are sure of your product quality and can openly ask your customers for their feedback, then this plan is for you. Don’t hesitate to ask your followers — suggest leaving a review on your website, drop surveys, and give away products for a test drive to the most active subscribers. This attracts returning customers, and sooner or later, new customers.


Adventurers and Seekers

Adventurers appreciate challenges, not results. You can capture them with multi-level quizzes or simply addictive tasks (search quests).

How to motivate them? It’s enough to offer some more points in the loyalty program or more chances to win. They don’t depend a lot on your prize fund.

Find Differences

Not only children love this game. Publish a standard image to your social media and the larger version — to your website. Your followers get interested and click to finish the game.

A Price War

Motivate your audience to compare and search the best price for a particular product in your online store. If you are selling clothes and there are several types of white blouses in your assortment, ask the participants to send a link to the most profitable purchase (at the lowest price). An excellent occasion for this idea can be back-to-school promotion.

Double Chances for the Target Action

In addition to the main contest terms, offer points or discounts for subscribing to your newsletter.

Extra in a Row

Replace one of the product pics on your storefront with a trending meme/sticker. The players need to find this product and send the link to it.

Macro Look

Post a fragment of your product on social media and suggest your followers to find this product in your online store.

The Progressive

This group consists of the most active users that are hungry for new technologies. They can react equally to an unusual ad, new visuals, or an unknown prize. These people collect everything unusual and show their trendiness to their audience.

They won’t take part in complicated games, but they can support your craziest ideas. They just want to try everything first. If you want to target these people, your company needs to be one step forward.

Playful Instagram Stories

It’s possible to insert a clickable link into your Stories images. The users are required to click “More” or swipe up to complete your target action. To motivate your users to do that, use the following games:

Gamifying Instagram Stories

No matter how creative your game is, it’s important to provide quality content on the pages you’ll lead your audience to. Abstract or boring content will cause disappointment and a high bounce rate.

Emoji Contests

Ask followers to explain something using emojis only.

Collecting Contacts

If you want not only subscribers’ activity, but also their contact information (postal addresses, telephones), then one of the methods can be conducting tests or polls. It’s simple:

  1. Write a questionnaire from the questions (you can ask anything, but remember that people like to talk about themselves most of all).
  2. Promise a bonus for filling out the questionnaire (any small prizes and discounts).
  3. Play out more valuable prizes among those who left the most complete contact information.

Video Creatives

Video is the trend of the past and current seasons. Even if you do not have a designer or videographer, you can create it with a smartphone and a free application.

One of the easiest ideas to implement is sliders (automatically changing images of one or more of your products):

Whatever psychotype the active nucleus of your community belongs to, remember: it is impossible to give subscribers too much attention, but it is easy to lose a significant part of the audience because of absence. Play more and have fun!

 

Table of contents

Sell online

With Ecwid Ecommerce, you can easily sell anywhere, to anyone — across the internet and around the world.

About the author

Anna is a content creator at Ecwid. She loves big cities, pasta and Woody Allen's films.

Ecommerce that has your back

So simple to use – even my most technophobic clients can manage. Easy to install, quick to set up. Light years ahead of other shop plugins.
I’m so impressed I’ve recommended it to my website clients and am now using it for my own store along with four others for which I webmaster. Beautiful coding, excellent top-notch support, great documentation, fantastic how-to videos. Thank you so much Ecwid, you rock!
I’ve used Ecwid and I love the platform itself. Everything is so simplified it’s insane. I love how you have different options to choose shipping carriers, to be able to put in so many different variants. It’s a pretty open e-commerce gateway.
Easy to use, affordable (and a free option if starting off). Looks professional, many templates to select from. The App is my favorite feature as I can manage my store right from my phone. Highly recommended 👌👍
I like that Ecwid was easy to start and to use. Even for a person like me, without any technical background. Very well written help articles. And the support team is the best for my opinion.
For everything it has to offer, ECWID is incredibly easy to set up. Highly recommend! I did a lot of research and tried about 3 other competitors. Just try ECWID and you'll be online in no time.

Your ecommerce dreams start here

By clicking “Accept All Cookies”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts.
Your Privacy

When you visit any website, it may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. This information might be about you, your preferences or your device and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to. The information does not usually directly identify you, but it can give you a more personalized web experience. Because we respect your right to privacy, you can choose not to allow some types of cookies. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings. However, blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. More information

More information

Strictly Necessary Cookies (Always active)
These cookies are necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off in our systems. They are usually only set in response to actions made by you which amount to a request for services, such as setting your privacy preferences, logging in or filling in forms. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not then work. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable information.
Targeting Cookies
These cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.
Functional Cookies
These cookies enable the website to provide enhanced functionality and personalisation. They may be set by us or by third-party providers whose services we have added to our pages. If you do not allow these cookies then some or all of these services may not function properly.
Performance Cookies
These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources, so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. They help us know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. If you do not allow these cookies, we will not know when you have visited our site.