Ya Win Some, Ya Lose Some

Hell hath no fury like a sore loser in a Facebook contest. No really, want to see the best side of people? Host a Facebook contest. This is NOT to say that we don't also LOVE and THANK 99.9% of the people who participate in our contest. We need to be very clear about the fact that we owe our business to you all, without you we would be nothing. In fact, we will probably never ever stop forcing you to take free collars every month during our contests, LOL!

But seriously, we asked a lot of our fans this month when we switched our contest platform from a "wall post" based contest, to a much more complex "app system" format. We expected hate mail, death threats and potentially even a contest flop, but instead we had a record number of participants (160 entries in 5 days) and were really really proud of how well people adapted and stuck by our side (happy tears). 

We learned a lot this month and wanted to share a few highlights and insights with you so you know what to expect in the future. We used a service called Wildfire this month. Wildfire proved to be glitchy through FB, a bit too cryptic with info, slow, and a bit clumsy for our taste. But, the contest was much easier to manage and kept our wall open for fun daily activities, which allowed us to do a FREE LEASH FRIDAY during the contest. Overall, we are sticking with the “app” thing but we are going to try a different company/service provider next month. During this last contest some fans told us about a service called OfferPop and we are planning to use them next month. Yes, it will be confusing to go with a new system, but we hope it will be easier to navigate and less squirrelly in the long run.

One more thing... We noticed that using a contest app actually marketed our contest to people outside of your fan base because the contest is posted on the App Company's website. We do NOT like this; it opened us up to a lot of "career contesters" who spend their days hawking FB for free stuff. We want to sincerely thanks a few kind folks who "flagged" some contest entries as bogus and alerted us to these few individuals who scam the system and could have ruined the contest for everyone had we not disqualified them from behind the scenes. Oh the things you learn in a week... But really, PLEASE let us know if you ever see any fishy activity on our FB page or during our contests, we will take immediate action.

Thank you all again for making this an awesome month here at Karma Collars!