Contest hosts want to maximize the number of times a person can vote.  If you do not wish to have users log in to vote, they can vote repeatedly.  Although this can translate into page views, more and more UIs are moving to a stationary experience, where pages are more dynamic and don’t require page refreshes.  In order to prevent people from just hacking away at it, or writing scripts to vote automatically, we always require a captcha.  Why not just disable the vote button and set a session cookie?  This is unreliable because some users (like my paranoid dad) have cookies disabled for various reasons.  This means some people will never know that they are not meant to have unlimited votes.

There are a number of options for a voting process if you require the person to log in.  Our system is able to attribute votes to a logged-in user and hence regulate the frequency of voting ie. voting once per day, once per entry, etc… Daily voting generates more engaging page views, as users return repeatedly to complete the experience (however short!).

The main problem with having people log in to vote, is that they have to register. Registration pages are notoriously bouncy: people hit them and split.

This is a good primer on bounce and exit rates.

Long site registration forms can be the touch of death, but there are ways to minimize the bounciness with shorter forms and potentially, services like Facebook Connect, Google Friend Connect,  and other single sign-on systems.

A two-step process would make it easier for a person to engage the site and as a result, lower the bounce rate on that page. The first step is a fast and simple, one-click register experience.  Once a person is logged in, he can vote and comment. He has a display name, an avatar, and all the fixins.  You can see this happening on this very blog using Facebook Connect.

If the person wishes to submit an entry to the contest, we need some more information.  Another form is presented to them, asking for name, address, etc… At this point, we would not require a captcha.

In the case where a 3rd party identity isn’t used, users must at least enter a password and confirm their email in order to participate.

Here are some ways people try to log fraudulent votes, and what to do about it:

1) A cheater can register repeatedly with phoney email addresses, and basically get unlimited votes. Without centralized identity, we can mitigate this by sending activation emails (yuk). The alternative is the contest host being prepared to manually search a vote log xls file and disqualify votes.

2) The cheating bastard could write a script to break your captcha and vote like crazy, automatically. A good programmer can use a combination of OCR software and other methods to read and crack a captcha. A better captcha makes this possible for only the more rare wily hacker. At that point, we can usually detect a crazy number of vote requests coming in via IP address. The user is denied access, and we can determine an estimated number of fraudulent votes.

3) The best fail safe is to simply reserve the right, in the rules, to use discretion in selecting a winner. If some jerk does manage to cheat, turf him.

I think voting is fun and effective for UGC contests.  If publishers and sponsors take the appropriate care, ensure a reasonable user experience, and allow discretion in the rules and regulations, voting can contribute greatly to the success of the project.

I might go so far as to say it is a %110 free download, given the extremely open set of formats it which it is available:

• High-quality MP3s (87 mb) – encoded with LAME at V0, fully tagged.
• FLAC lossless (259 mb) – CD quality
• FLAC high definition 24/96 (942 mb) – better-than-CD-quality 24bit 96kHZ audio
• M4A apple lossless (263 mb) – CD quality – will play in itunes.
• High definition WAVE 24/96 (1.5 gb) – better-than-CD-quality 24bit 96kHz audio

To add to the modernity of this release, all the the bigger packages are distributed via torrents. Therefore, they only pay to transfer a tiny file from their servers. That’s hella-smart.

There is also the option to order the super-deluxe, collectors CD/DVD and vinyl editions. Now THAT is value.

Trent Reznor is the One-Man-Show (in the studio, at least) behind NIN and has consistently driven the crest of the wave for the music industry. They have released their last several albums as free downloads, and for the Year Zero publicity, placed easter eggs URLs around the Internet, each with clues about the album. Fans were encouraged to compile the whole story in the NIN wiki.

They have also made some of their singles available as Garageband projects and full 24/96 Pro-tools sessions for fans to remix. Being a pro-audio geek, that is insanely cool. Check out the remix of “Only” that I built with Pro Tools.

What about video you ask? What about UGC? What about mobile? How about the new fan content gallery, the iPhone game, and 400GB of HD concert footage to play with.

Perhaps they could use an online Mashup Tool for that?

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.

In that post, I discussed that user can participate to the creative world not only by authoring content, but also creating playlists of pro content (UGP – User Generated Programming) or presenting it in their own way (UDP – User Distributed Programming).

The CBC recently launched Rogers Hockey Night MashUp, where users can browse a massive gallery of NHL clips and fly them into a very Flashy online video editor.  This solution was delivered via a technology partnership between Filemobile and IndusBlue.

User-Edited Content

Using this set of tools, Joe can now assemble his favourite videos clips, add music tracks, and then publish his “creation” to a gallery, where it can be picked, panned, rated and shared by the masses.  Future versions will include the ability to add voice-overs and actual user-generated content to the timeline.

This adds an interesting balance between professional, high quality content and personalized content.  Users are engaging with the content brand as well as the sponsor, and feel compelled to share their creations on their networks.  Time-on-site is higher than anything I’ve seen, and bounce rates are rock-bottom.  Add in pre and post roll video, and you have an impression bonanza.

Since this campaign is built upon Filemobile’s Mediafactory platform, a number of “Engagement” factors can be measured, such as views, shares, digs, ratings, comments, etc…

A great article about this type of engagement, and how some are proposing to synthesize these metrics, is Terms of Engagement: Measuring the Active Consumer, by Mark Ghuneim.

One might assume, that the cream would rise to the top and the most engaging song  would indeed be the finest piece of music submitted.  I’m happy to say, that this clearly the case with Logan Aube’s opus entitled Hockey Scores. The statistics and comments speak for themselves:  Canadians have a very odd sense of humour. 

Check out the press release from CTV…

This is my audition! Why not leave a comment?

The value of users creating content is that your customers can be participants, and interact with your message instead of just being spectators. With a well-considered moderation plan, this user-generated content (UGC) can create brand credibility via public advocacy.

Case in point: CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada presents Bring Home the Stanley Cup.

Videos posted by hockey fans (particularly the finalists – currently posted from last year’s campaign) display passion for the game of hockey, the history of the NHL and Stanley Cup, family values and national unity. What better messages for Canada’s National broadcaster, a network for the people and of the people (via tax dollars), and the National Hockey League, striving to present family-friendly entertainment to an ever-fickle, globalized consumer?  The winning videos are even shown during a HNIC broadcast.

Although this is a great example of brand-focused, successful UGC campaign, most user-generated content is just plain bad.

Sure we can get people to submit videos and even get those videos on broadcast, but most of it is unpalatable.

What other roles can users fill within the communications value chain besides that of content producers?

User-Generated Programming (UGP)

This is in the form of having users create their own playlists of “engineered content”. Joe or Jane Sixpack can create their own channels of content, whether it be highlights of her favourite sports team, his favourite heavy metal playlist, or news as she wants it: world, business then entertainment. Users will stay longer, consume more content and even watch ads, if they are getting what they want AND its easy to get it.

User-Distributed Programming (UDP)

This is more than letting users share items with friends, or even embedding your video on their MySpace or Facebook page. Once a user creates his custom programming, he should be able to watch it anywhere. Take for instance, a popular talent show on television. The user selects an “engineered playlist”, such as all content, the 5 most popular clips, last night’s highlights, etc; and places it on his iGoogle. Every time that show airs, he get his fix HOW he wants and WHERE he wants it. He is such a big fan that he filters a playlist by a particular contestant (or team, etc…) and places it on his Facebook to show everyone that he is a fan. Wrap a call to action around it, and you’ve got a tethered, programmable, interactive, advocated, customizable, traffic-driving super-widget that is hit-trackable back the source! How, you ask?

Note the difference between iGoogle and Facebook/MySpace. On iGoogle, I consume MY content. On Facebook/MySpace YOU consume MY content. Well, sort of. Here is a great quote from Family Guy’s Stewie Griffin, trying to impress a high school girl:

“I took a bunch of pictures, you can see them on my MySpace page along with my favourite songs and movies and things that other people have created that I use to express my individualism.”

The microsite is called “Connect NOW!” and encourages fans of the show to gather and share photos, videos and “Life Lists”.

Check it out at: http://www.cbc.ca/now

We are live!

Filemobile has launched the latest version of MuchMusic’s ShowMeYours.TV!!

I uploaded this picture directly from the site. You can also upload content with you mobile phone. Cool.

http://www.showmeyours.tv