When that just isn’t enough, it has become increasingly common to “throw in” a UGC contest. It provides further tie-in to the show via the existing web presence, is low-cost and if you know your Web 2.0 lingo, can get a client’s curiosity, interest and even excitement.

I think it is worth looking at some of the ways to value a UGC contest. This is a contest wherein you must upload content in order to be considered for a prize. Winners can be determined in a number of ways including public opinion, judging or random draw. There a number of issues to consider when defining rules, but this outside the scope of this post.

In order to measure the value of a contest, it is important to note what you can expect a contest to produce. Three key products of a UGC contest are demographic data, ad inventory and content. There is also the less quantifiable “positive brand affinity”, but if it can’t be easily measured, it’s little more than a sales talking point.

Demographic data

Who is engaging with my brand, where are they, and will they let me spam them? This is by far the most common brute-force method of generating a tangible, actionable product via a contest. It can also be one of the more obnoxious aspects of participating in a contest. It’s important that there is a balance between getting the data, and minimizing bounces (people immediately leaving the site).

The number of completed entries in your database is proportional to the value of the prize. With this in mind, you don’t need anything except an entry form and a prize information page. Think of it this way: you are offering them a chance to win something in exchange for their personal information. Users are savvy enough these days to know that their data is valuable, and a toaster is not enough to get them to give it up.

Don’t ask for information you don’t need. For example, if you aren’t sending a mailer, do you still need their street address? Most contest systems require the user to enter at least an email address. If want them to opt in to your newsletter, give them a good idea of what the newsletter contains. Make it even more worthwhile by offering coupons for your product via email.

Ad Inventory

For a publisher, the motivation for a self-sponsored contest is primarily to drive subscriptions for electronic newsletters or build awareness of another product (such as CTV’s fall launch campaign). That doesn’t mean you can’t add the page views and video pre-roll to your existing inventory.

Where this makes the most sense is with a sponsored contest. A fully branded microsite within the publisher’s brand site benefits from a built in audience. Any publisher will have excellent statistics describing their core audience demographic.

So how can a UGC contest be in a unique position to drive impressions through social media? If the contest has a voting aspect, users will be compelled to share their video with peers on their social networks via social bookmarking and posting tools on the contest site. Making Facebook Connect available to users allows some social activities (such as uploading and commenting) to automatically be broadcast to their friends. This places a tidy brand message in Facebook, and potentially brings users’ friends back to the contest site.

With some creativity and some Flash razzle-dazzle, you could build a branded widget that allows users to feature their content on any social network, with branding, and interaction built in. Remember how people use these networks, though: on Facebook, I put my content there to be consumed by my friends, not by me.

A good way to have people share content is to tie it with voting. Give people the tools to campaign for their entry.

Content

Although user-generated is generally synonymous with “bad”, it is the needles in the haystack, the diamonds in the rough and that tasty sausage in a sea of turds that can make the campaign memorable, if even only for that fleeting 15 minutes.

In order to get usable content, make the task simple and specific. Seed content with a variety of interpretations of the simple task. Nobody wants to be first, and most people will take a lead and go with it. Focus your concept on video, because it is more engaging and you can sell pre-roll against it.

It’s not uncommon for firms to spend tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousand of dollars on a 30 second TV spot. You only need to focus your strategy on gathering 1-2 minutes of footage to cut together a decent spot.

These are a few observations have come up with many of the UGC contests I have worked on. If you have some examples of good UGC contest concepts, let us know in the comments.