People love contests and they love to win — so if you’re looking for a fun way to bring more traffic to your page and increase your online presence, you should try holding a social media contest.

You’ve probably seen other businesses doing social media contests themselves, so you already have an idea of how it goes. As with any contests, there are rules and there’s a call to action. Participants have to do something over a set period of time for a chance to earn a prize. It’s that simple, and it can be just as much fun for you as it is for your followers.

What’s the benefit for you?

Besides showing everyone you’re a personable business that likes engaging with the community around it (that’s what social media is for, right?), it builds your presence online. You’ll get more followers, and your current followers will have a renewed reason to visit your page.

First, you should decide the logistics: what kind of contest you will hold, how will people participate, how long will the contest run, what prizes will you give away and will you do all of this in collaboration with another business.

Rules of Play

This is probably the hardest to develop, but it’s also the fun part. Determining the rules of play encompasses not only what kind of contest you’ll hold but also how people will participate. Why not try one of these:

• One great idea for a contest is to encourage selfies. Ask people to take a selfie of what they’re doing on a specific day, take a selfie with their pet, take a selfie of themselves working out, take a selfie with their family, and so on — you get the idea. All they have to do is post their selfie in the comments under your contest announcement and they’ll be entered in a drawing to win. Or instead of doing a drawing, you could encourage other participants to vote for their favorites by liking the photos posted in the comments section.

• Another idea is to do a trivia contest. You’ll post a question every day at a designated time. People have to comment with the correct answer to be entered into a drawing. See how much people know about you by asking trivia questions pertaining to your business or your industry. Aim to come up with tough questions that people can’t look up online, but don’t get so difficult that people feel discouraged or turned off.

• One popular type of contest is where people have to caption a photo. Find a strange or funny photo and post it online. Tell your followers, “Caption this.” They have to come up with the wittiest or most appropriate caption for the photo and write it in the comments. Then others can vote for their favorite caption by liking the best comments.

Whatever type of contest you opt to do, remember to keep it simple. People love to play and they love to win, but they don’t like to put forth a lot of effort. If the rules of your contest are too complex or they require participants to do too much, then people will be less likely to play.

Duration of Play

Determine how long you want for your contest to run. You want to let there be plenty of time for word to spread, but you don’t want for it to go on for so long that people lose interest. Usually a few days to a week will be the ideal time. Some contests will require one-time engagement — for example, the selfie contest requires a person to take only one selfie and share it. But you want to give people a few days to participate.

Even if you have tons of people who take their selfie and share it with you right away, there will be several people who won’t get around to doing it for several days. You also want to give time for word to spread, so even those who didn’t find out about the contest on the day you announced it can still participate several days later. Be sure to pin your contest announcement to the top of your feed so it is easy to find.