Why Run a Company Contest?

Building hype around the event will encourage staff to talk to each other about the T-shirt competition, and it will also give them something to look forward to when the winner is announced. Another benefit is that these are more affordable than many other kinds of company parties that typically cost about $75 per person. By comparison, printing custom shirts for your business can cost $20-30 for smaller orders and are even cheaper per garment for larger orders.

But the best part of a T-shirt contest is that it’s easy for people to participate. Team members don’t have to be artists to know what looks good or what their colleagues like to wear, and with the right tools, you can make the design process easy and accessible for everyone.

How to Hold a T-Shirt Design Contest

The fact is that some personnel will need to be reassured that they can join in on the fun. They may worry that the design process will be too difficult for them. Luckily, intuitive tools like BlueCotton’s Design Studio make it so anyone can create a shirt design and enter the contest! Built-in features are labeled clearly to make it simple to add text, clip art, shapes and even images.

Your first step to running a competition is to decide how it will work. Some T-shirt design contest rules to consider include:

• Who can enter? Are teams joining together, or can individuals participate?
• What counts as an entry? Make it clear whether designs must be completely original or if design templates can be incorporated, such as those in our Design Ideas
• Choose a deadline. Give people a reasonable amount of time to create and submit their company shirt design. Consider adding a grace period too, in case a staff member experiences an illness or other unforeseen circumstances.

Once those are decided, put someone in charge of it. While it’s a low-maintenance event to boost employee engagement, someone should still be responsible for managing it. They will have to promote the shirt contest to the staff, collect the entries and organize a panel to choose a winner, or do so themselves.

To make it more meaningful to your company, coordinate your competition to line up with an annual event you already host, a milestone for the business or another date or occasion that’s special to your organization.

Keep the Engagement Going

Don’t stop there: Make the company contest a regular celebration to show staff you’re invested in the culture at your workplace. This will give veteran workers a sense of community and tradition, and they’ll be excited to tell newcomers about the design competition.

By creating an environment where employees have something beyond work to discuss and collaborate on, you’ll be helping them to connect more deeply to your business. Get creative, have fun and let your team know they’re appreciated with this great event!

The post Boost Company Engagement with a T-Shirt Design Contest appeared first on The BlueCotton Blog.

Aside from knowing your audience and promoting your contest on the right channels, here’s some advice to help you keep everything running smoothly.

Start With Very Clear Goals

First thing’s first – have a sit-down with your internal colleagues and stakeholders before you go any further. Talk to your public relations professionals and social media team, and ensure everyone is aligned on your specific goals. The question you need to answer is what you’re trying to accomplish with your contest.

Are you simply trying to get more followers on social media? Are you looking to generate some brand awareness and goodwill? Are you trying to build a network of prospective customer, or show off a key feature of your website or one of your products or services?

A contest built from the ground-up for a specific purpose will always enjoy greater success than one without direction.

Make Things Easy For Participants

People aren’t going to jump through hoops, even if it means they’ve the chance for some free swag. What you need to keep in mind is that these people are the ones providing value to you, not the other way around. You need to make things as easy as possible for them – a click of a button to share a post, entering a phone number, or typing out an email address should be all that’s required to enter.

Mind you, that doesn’t mean you can’t have contests or giveaways that require a bit of extra legwork on the behalf of your participants – provided you give them enough value. One example could be a photo contest on Instagram or a story writing contest on Facebook. In both cases, entering the contest does require a fair bit of work, but it also allows participants to engage in something they might find enjoyable – and it gives them the chance for some exposure on social media, which is always a great thing.

Test, Test, And Test Some More

If you’re running a giveaway, you can’t have things get derailed on the first day by a ton of technical issues. Test any systems you’re using for your contest extensively before it goes live – do everything in your power to make sure everything is in working order. Make sure everything is mobile-friendly as well, and that you’ve got plans in place for anything that could go wrong.

Preparation is the word here – the more prep work you do, the better your contest will go.

Ensure Everything Is Legally Above Board

There’s actually a great deal of legalese involved in hosting a contest. As such, you need to have a solid legal team backing you up if you’re running one. Work with them to put together a set of rules and regulations to help you manage potential liability.

Keep The Prizes Relevant

Last but certainly not least, choose a prize that your audience will actually enjoy – and one that’s also tied to your brand. If, for example, you’re a makeup retailer, you could offer winners a choice of beauty products. If you’re an auto parts supplies, you could offer free auto detailing for a set amount of time. If you sell electronics, offer a TV or the latest smart device.

You get the idea.

Closing Thoughts

Contests can be a great way to generate goodwill for your brand. Now that you know what’s involved in running a successful one, you can get started on it. And if you want to spice things up with some custom clothing, you can always check out BlueCotton’s design studio.

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The folks at the PopCultureTees blog recently posted a great review of our site! Here’s a small excerpt from the article:

They sent a few dark tees with underbased prints that held up under stress testing of stretching the material (if you see cracks in the print when stretching the tee, you know it wasn’t properly cured). The trapping was spot on and it looked like the artwork had been well-prepped.

For you less technical folks: The prints looked great.

If you want to read the entire article, you can check it out here.

Now, as an opportunity to show off our outstanding product quality and customer service, we’re offering PopCultureTees readers the chance to win 24 FREE Screen Printed Tees! Click here to see how to enter the contest and to check out the rules. Hurry! The contest ends April 6th!

Update: The contest has ended. Thanks to all of you that participated!

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