Are you thinking of participating in a few social media challenges in an attempt to increase engagement on your accounts?
Or maybe you’re considering creating your own challenge.
In this post, we share examples of successful social media challenges and provide tips on how to create your own.
How to use social media challenges as a marketing strategy
There are two primary ways to use social media challenges as a growth strategy:
- Participating in challenges
- Creating your own challenge
Both are completely valid, and you should really do both if they make sense for your niche and the audience you’ve built or hope to build.
Participating in a challenge is a great way to take advantage of a hot social media trend. When it comes to a platform like TikTok, anyone who likes content for a particular trend will see more content for that trend on their For You Page (fyp).
Chances are they’ll come across your content as well, especially if the trend uses a particular sound.
Creating your own challenge is a good way to make a name for your brand by attaching it to a unique and difficult activity for your audience to try.
It’s often easier to participate in a challenge than it is to create a new one, but creating one that gains traction will help you build authority in your niche.
Just start with whichever one you feel you have the capability of tackling at the moment.
How do social media challenges help grow your audience?
Videos that portray you taking on a challenge are fantastic for the algorithm. You become more relatable by sharing yourself attempting something that doesn’t come easy to you.
It can also be entertaining to watch someone try and fail at something.
It’s also inspiring if they finally accomplish their goal. Your audience will want to join in by posting their own attempts, which means you’ll have successfully launched a marketing campaign that branched out into user-generated content (UGC), which is a gold mine for brand awareness.
Certain challenges also help you be more consistent on social media.
If it’s a challenge you can’t accomplish in one video, you can extend the challenge by posting regular updates for it to share your progress.
Examples of challenges on social media
A social media challenge you’ve likely heard of is the Ice Bucket challenge, which saw influencers, celebrities and everyday people alike dumping buckets of ice on themselves and others in a fun attempt to raise money and awareness for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Participants of this challenge were encouraged to call out other people at the end of their videos to get others to take on the challenge as well. Nominees had 24 hours to respond. If they failed, they had to make a donation to the ALS Association.
This callout trick kept the Ice Bucket challenge going for quite some time. Nowadays, social media trends are over in a flash.
Other popular social media trends include the Mannequin challenge and the cinnamon challenge.
Niche trends
These are general challenges anyone can join in, even folks who aren’t necessarily social media influencers.
So, let’s go over a couple niche trends.
TikTok creator and figure skater @britanniegrenier created two videos: one where she challenges a hockey player to skating challenges and another where she challenges her sister to figure skating challenges.
The hockey video had an engagement rate of 22.37%. Its metrics include 74.9 million views and 16.2 million likes.
The sister video had an engagement rate of 21.46%. Its metrics include 7.7 million views and 1.6 million likes.
Both videos were published using “Pump It” by The Black Eyed Peas as a sound. If you browse the sound, you’ll find similar challenges posted by fellow figure skaters.
TikTok creator @jenny.cathy.vids publishes an ongoing challenge that’s a great example of a challenge you create regular updates for.
In this challenge, she’s learning how to play the guitar and posts one video for every day in which she practices.
Her very first video had an engagement rate of 12.11%. Its metrics include 5.7 million views and 662,000 likes.
The challenge has lost interest over time, but it’s a fantastic example of a challenge that helps you be more consistent with your content and a goal you’d like to accomplish.
How to participate in a challenge on social media
Use social media in the same way any other user uses social media: browse your feed/fyp, like and share content, follow creators you enjoy, and leave comments.
As long as you’re active on social media, you’ll come across trends you can participate in.
Make sure you’re consuming and liking content related to your niche to ensure you receive niche-related challenges in your feed.
When you see a challenge you like, study it to learn everything that’s required to participate in it. Then, come up with unique ways to participate in the challenge, and post your own attempt.
How to create your own social media challenge
Follow these steps to create your own social media challenge:
- Come up with an idea that targets struggles your audience is having.
- Define rules and requirements your audience must follow to participate.
- Post a video of you participating in the challenge.
- Share videos of your audience participating in the challenge.
- Post a video that demonstrates your results, if applicable.
1. Come up with an idea for your challenge
Brainstorm struggles you’re having in your niche and things that are difficult.
You should also take the time to research your audience’s pain points to come up with additional ideas. Common sources include your own comment section and inbox, forums, and comment sections for videos related to your niche.
You can also ask your audience directly in a social media post, Instagram story or marketing email.
Once you have a decent-sized list, come up with ideas for challenges you can create for each. Then, choose the best one.
Save your research for additional challenges you might want to create later.
2. Define rules and requirements for your challenge
Rules and requirements are the foundation of any challenge.
Sports are a good example of this. In basketball, anyone can tuck the ball under their arm to protect it until they get close enough to the hoop to shoot an accurate shot.
This is why traveling was invented as a rule. It enhances the challenge the game provides by requiring players to dribble the ball every few steps.
In Brittany Grenier’s videos, her challenges required another skater to compete with. She wasn’t just attempting tricks on her own.
Think of your challenge, and see if there are any ways you can subtly up the stakes by creating your own set of rules and requirements for completing it.
3. Demonstrate yourself participating in your challenge
The best way to launch your challenge is to show yourself participating in it.
Create a video of your attempt, and publish it to your social media account.
To increase its success, create a hashtag for your challenge, invite other creators to participate in it, and attach a popular song or trending sound to your challenge video.
Share your milestones along the way
If your challenge is an ongoing task that cannot be completed in one post, share updates regularly.
Be sure to make a post whenever you hit a particular milestone.
4. Share user-generated content
If your audience participates in your challenge, repost and share their content in your own feed.
Not only does this increase brand loyalty by giving you a way to recognize your audience for their participation, it also encourages other social media users to post their own attempts.
UGC is valuable content because it’s social media content for your brand that you didn’t have to create or commission.
5. Share your results
If your challenge isn’t something you can accomplish in one video, be sure to share your results when you reach your goal.
Discuss how long it took you to reach your goal, any prep work you did to complete the challenge, tools and techniques you used, and more.
These results will inspire your audience to post their own attempts.
Again, your challenge has potential milestones you create. Publish content whenever you reach these milestones to keep the challenge going for a healthy amount of time.
6. Make it a contest, and choose a winner (optional)
Most challenges are just for entertainment purposes. They’re interactive ways for you to increase engagement in your niche.
Consider upping the stakes by turning your challenge into a contest. Whoever has the best attempt at completing your challenge wins.
Giveaway something that’s valuable in your niche. You can try to get the challenge sponsored by a brand if need be. They’ll provide a product for you to give a way.
Use a giveaway tool like SweepWidget if you want to host a giveaway or contest on your site but have things like “follow me” and “like the video” as requirements for entry.
If what you’re giving away is valuable enough, more and more of your audience will participate in the challenge.
Final thoughts
Interactive types of content like challenges are some of the best ways to drive engagement and community growth on social.
They do take more time and effort than sharing random photos or videos but the results should prove worthwhile.
And if you combine your challenge with a giveaway, you’ll see even better results.
Related reading:
- How To Promote Your Blog On Social Media
- Best Instagram Analytics Tools: Reporting Made Easy
- The Best Time To Post On Social Media (Guide To Popular Networks)
Disclosure: Our content is reader-supported. If you click on certain links we may make a commission.
