We all know that YouTube is a growing community of passionate viewers looking for something new to do.
But, just uploading content on your channel doesn’t grow your channel alone.
Your audience needs to be motivated to subscribe and follow your channel.
To do this, you should get your audience more personally involved with your brand.
Audience contests can increase interests in your viewers and get them to subscribe.
Why use an Audience Contest
An audience contest can help to spread your channel through word-of-mouth.
You can use an audience contest to get your existing audience to share about your channel. 
Although the above example is an Instagram contest, the concept is the same.
The contest gave out the rules for participation straight to the point, with simple rules.
And it also made sure to describe the intention of the contest.
An audience contest can help to increase followers and get more attention for the brand.
By hosting an audience contest we can make our social media channels such as YouTube more active.
An audience contests can also increase your customer loyalty, when you allow them to participate in your videos.
By having your audience participate in your contests, you can get more engagements.
Your content can increase hype for future contests.
This would make your audience want to invest in your content even more.
The Ellen Show makes use of audience participation to win over their audience.
Something that’s important to know when hosting a contest is, The Reward.
You have to make sure your reward is beneficial for your audience.
But, more on that later.
Before you begin hosting a YouTube audience contest, you need to plan it out.
Set a Plan Ahead
We must plan out the entire roadmap ahead of what we want to do.
Your audience contest must follow some key requirements to ensure its success.
Here are some key points to note:
- Have a Deadline and a Start Date – This is pretty simple. Your contest needs to have a proper start and end date.
- Participation Policy – Your audience needs to know the rules of how to participate and rules against cheat.
- The Engagement Strategy – There won’t be a point to your contest if your audience don’t engage and promote your channel.
- What your audience gets – A simple, yet crucial point to note is that your audience must gain something from your contest.
- What you get – You or your organization must go through this with a requirement to fulfill at the end.
This article will go further into how to use this plan effectively.
But, one thing to note before starting your YouTube Audience Contest, is to read the YouTube Contest Policy.
How your audience takes part in the contest
You’ve managed to grab their attention, GREAT!!!
Now, let’s figure out how they’re going to participate.
Social media has been a great influence to grow the participation numbers.
A finding from this Formstack Study, identified that participation in a contest increased by 189% when using social media auto-fill.
This significant increment takes places because it removes the hassle of signing up.
Here we can see the effect of signing up with social media.
The example above is from the FormStack Auto-fill plugin.
By using personal data that’s available from their social media accounts, your audience can easily sign up.
Let everyone join
Hosting an audience contest can be a difficult journey.
Mostly, because your audience might not just be from one demographic.
And thus delivering your prize to them might not be so, easy.
(Source: ChannelMeter)
The second most popular viewers demographic on YouTube is from India and the first from the U.S.
You can imagine the logistic nightmare it would be to deliver to either nations winners.
Your reward should be Digital, or something you can give to anyone.
A simple amazon gift card or credit to your online store can help to gain your audiences interests.
But an essential aspect of an audience contest is that it must be something relevant.
Relevancy in the YouTube space can mean many things.
If you’re running a VLOG channel, you might want to try giving away accessories that can be shipped worldwide.
If your channel is about gaming, you might prefer to giveaway credits from within the most prominent game you play.
The best reward, is a reward within your brands domain.
Collaborating with other YouTubers
YouTube collaboration isn’t that common.
Most YouTubers spend time on their own channels growth.
But, a collaboration which is beneficial for both parties of the contest can be highly beneficial.
You can double your participant numbers, by getting someone to collaborate with your channel.
Collaborations give way to a whole new audience and can be used to promote the contest easily.
Influencers Only
Take into consideration limiting the participation of contests for other youtubers.
Or even limited to only influencers like the screenshot of a Mr.Beast video above.
By doing this, you can gain the attention of the participating influencers on the video.
This is also a recommended choice for the host and the participants alike.
Because, by doing this challenge all parties involved get an R.O.I (Return on Investment).
The host gets more viewers, and their contests get promoted before taking place by the participants and their fans.
The participants get to win a huge reward that can give them a financial benefit for their channel.
The audience get to see more content of their favorite YouTubers all coming together.
But the risks of hosting such an event is that it only benefits temporarily.
Of course, the hype is real and many people begin to view your channel.
Unfortunately, the conversion of your participants audience unto your own is not guaranteed.
A Web Page for your Contestants
Your YouTube video might not be enough, your contestants might need more.
Creating a web page or post that details out your contest details can help out.
This page can be used to brief all your audiences across multiple platforms on the current status of your contest.
Also, you can let people know of the status of a contest that has met its deadline.
You can also consider pinning your video as a featured video on your YouTube channel Homepage.
The growth of your channel from an audience contest cannot be 100% guaranteed.
So, be sure to plan out your entire contest and how you expect it to go through before investing time and money into it.