4 Easy Ways to Get Contest Votes on Facebook

Use Vote Exchanges and Other Facebook Strategies to Win More Contests

Many contests enlist the public's participation by giving them the chance to vote for their favorite entry to win. That means that if you want to win these contests, you need to rally people to vote for your entry. That makes it important to know how to gather votes effectively if you want to become a big winner.

Social media is an important tool for reaching out to people and asking them for votes. Here are some ideas for getting votes on Facebook to secure an edge over your competition.

Tip:

For more ideas about how to improve your odds of winning outside of Facebook, check out How to Get Votes for Contests.

Use Your Facebook Wall

People in windows in a wall
Leverage Your Facebook Wall to Get More Votes. David Malan / Getty Images

The simplest way to get votes on Facebook is to simply ask.

Just post a link to your contest entry on your Facebook wall, and ask your friends and family members to help you. If not all of your Facebook friends are interested in giveaways, you can use Friend Lists to show your vote requests only to the people you want to ask to vote for you.

Becoming Facebook friends with other people who enter contests makes this strategy even more effective. Friends who know how much meaning wins to you are more likely to vote enthusiastically and regularly. Visit sweepstakes groups and online forums to find people who share your passion for winning.

If people are allowed to vote more than once, you want to be sure to remind them to enter regularly. But how can you do this without either asking too often or forgetting to make a post?

A social media scheduler like Buffer is a good solution. Buffer lets you schedule posts to appear whenever you want. If you write one post per day or per week for the length of the entry, you can encourage your friends to come back and vote regularly, without much effort.

Join Facebook Vote Exchange Groups

Students holding buttons at voter registration
Facebook voting groups are a valuable way to help each other win. Ariel Skelley / Getty Images

Vote exchange groups on Facebook exist to allow people to ask for votes for their contest entries. Usually, you're expected to "return" votes by helping to vote for the people who voted for you. Be sure to read the group rules before participating.

Warning:

Before you start asking for votes through exchanges, be sure that the rules of your contest don't prohibit them. Sometimes, you're only allowed to ask for votes from people you know personally. Breaking this rule can result in disqualification!

Vote exchange groups spring up and disappear regularly. Use Google search and Facebook search to find current groups.

Create Your Own Facebook Voting Group

Portrait diverse group near Vote text
Starting your own Facebook group can help you draw together people who can help you win votes. Hero Images / Getty Images

Creating a group on Facebook is free and easy. If you create one yourself, you can leverage it to drive votes to your contest.

You don't even need to set up and maintain a vote exchange group for this to work, if you don't want to. For example, you can set up a Facebook group for one specific contest, or gather your sweepstakes friends together to form a mutual support group to share winning tips and encouragement as well as votes.

If you don't know how to get started, see How Do I Create a Group? from Facebook's support pages.

Ask Your Friends to Spread the Word

When you promote your contest, don't just ask your friends to vote, ask them to spread the word as well. If their friends and the friends of those friends start voting, your votes can rise exponentially.

You have higher chances of getting people you don't know to vote when your post catches their interest. For example, you could give some background about why you entered the contest or tell the story behind your entry. Your post could be funny, tug on heartstrings, or just have a really cute picture that goes with it.

With some luck, your vote request could go viral and help you win.