Fun Message Board Contest Ideas

Do you run a message board and want to start offering contests? It is a fun way to get people to participate in your online community, as well as bring people out to your site to participate at the chance to earn a prize. For the past several years I have been running contests and games on the Coordinates Collections message board. Here are some fun ideas for contests that you can have on your message board. Some of these ideas would also work for having a contest on your blog or website.

I generally run contests on a weekly basis. Participants in each contest get entered into a monthly drawing for a prize, courtesy of Coordinates Collections. Some contests, such as a Post the Most contest (see below) work better as a month-long contest. In this case I do it in addition to the weekly contests. Sometimes I have a Super Contest Month, with prizes for each weekly contest, and sometimes more than one winner per week.

Some contests that work better for having a winner each time include, Be There or Be Square and the Countdown Game. A game that only works well with a prize is the Countdown Game. In this game the original poster starts with a number, say 100, then each subsequent poster posts the next number down (99, 98 etc.) until you get to zero. Beforehand the person running the game has selected a secret number (or several numbers). At the end of the game, whoever has posted the secret numbers is a winner!

In Be There or Be Square, I give a prize to someone who is active on the message board when I check at a certain time. Usually I do this three or four times during the week.

A Post the Most contest is a month-long contest during which participants participate actively on the board. At the end of the month I check the number of posts participants have made and a prize goes to the top poster.

Now, for the weekly contest ideas. Games are a very popular contest idea. You can do either a continual game, or a one-time game. A continual game runs the entire week and participants can play more than once. This can be any type of game common to message boards, such as an ABC game. For other one-time game ideas see my article titled �â'¬Å"Message Board Game Ideas.�â'¬ï¿½

A one-time game can only be played once by each participant. The best example of this is Scattegories. The moderator posts a letter and 10 categories. Each participants emails the moderator with a list of items starting with the letter, one for each categories. Once the contest ends, the moderator crosses out all items used by more than one participant and determines the winner. Reverse scattegories is another one-time game. It works the same way, but with one category and 10 letters.

A game that can be played either way is seeing how many words participants can make out of a certain phrase.

Some other contest ideas include sharing a recipe, changing avatars to reflect a season or holiday, sharing a photo (your kids in a Halloween costume, your holiday decorations), a challenge to send a thank you note or give compliments, or sharing a favorite project. Creating a trivia quiz is another fun contest. Have participants email their answers to you, then post the correct answers after the contest closes. Another contest I love to do is a decluttering contest, or Spring Cleaning. Participants must get rid of 3 things around the house and report back.

Remember, whatever type of contest you use, be sure to provide clear rules, deadlines and instructions and be available to answer questions about the contest during the time it runs.