What is the difference between contest and sweepstakes

And compared to a contest being a game of skill, sweepstakes are a game of chance. The winner must be selected at random — for example, using a service like Random. A lottery is a means of raising money by selling numbered tickets and giving prizes to the holders of numbers drawn at random.

The winner is chosen at random, like in a sweepstakes, but entrants have to pay to play unlike a sweepstakes. A lottery is essentially a game of luck that has an entry fee. Every state has strict laws barring private lotteries, however, and most lotteries for promotion of a business are going to be illegal lotteries.

Sweepstakes must differentiate themselves from lotteries in order to stay within the law. Usually this is done by taking away the element of consideration aka sweepstakes are usually free whereas lotteries are not.

There are. Social media platforms have their guidelines, too. Are the majority of your social media fans tech gods and goddesses?

Then a video contest is an excellent idea and a great way to engage this group by letting them show off their skills.

However, if you doubt the video-editing prowess of your target audience, something slightly less labor-intensive may be the way to go. What if your contest goes viral and you start getting thousands of entries? Are you prepared to handle that? What are you going to do about that? In a very recent example of contests gone horribly wrong, Australian airline Qantas held a Twitter contest with the hashtag qantasluxury and received a vast majority of negative and joke responses ridiculing their service and the fact that the prize was a pair of pajamas.

Have you held a social media sweepstakes or contest before? How did it go? Would you do it again? Let us know your thoughts in the comments! But regardless of what they are called, the most typically run promotion is actually a sweepstakes. It is defined as a promotional drawing in which prizes are given out at no charge to the participants.

Winners are selected at random. A sweepstakes awards winners through random draw; winners are determined based purely on chance. Winners will be chosen or judged based on their submission or performance.