The future of SP-Studio contests

[Janina]

It's a pitty the lack of participation in the latest editions.
Maybe the 'open' way with no registration could be tested to see if it works... but I think that the reason is in the changes in people about internet and smart-phones.
The contest's themes also has relationship with the participation. The last one wasn't an easy one.

I'd like the contest to go on.

[Janina]

Most contests these days are run via Facebook (like the picture you want to win!), but I am not sure about this approach... the pictures which show up first have better chances. And you'd need a facebook account to vote. Most people have one, but it's still a restriction - and I'd prefer to be independent.
Another approach would be to find a WordPress plugin. I will post some of them here after some research.

Do you think we need the 5 stars system or is a simple "like" system good enough? I think it's important to be able to vote for more than one picture, but I am not sure if we need the stars.

[Jetpack-guy]

[Janina]

Thank you Jetpack-guy.

I am more familiar with Facebook than with Instagram. How do you think the submission of the pictures should be handled? I could build an easy submission form for the website and also allow submissions via Facebook.

Would it make sense to combine the likes on Instagram and Facebook so everybody can use their favorite platform (or even both)? I still know many people who only use Facebook and no Instagram.

Of course social media means the contests won't be anonymous anymore and everybody would be allowed to promote their pictures. I guess we'd have to try it out to see if the results still look fair.

[Jetpack-guy]

I think using Facebook in the way you said makes sense, I was thinking the Facebook contest way was the really clickbaity "like this photo for chance to win £250!" kind of contest.

I'm no social media expert, if you are more comfortable with a particular platform go for that. People will be more likely to engage if it looks like you know what you're doing

I neither use Facebook nor Instagram. Maybe you can use these platforms to promote the contests and keep the contests open so a registration isn't necessary to upload pics.

In the past the contest entries/winners were more appreciated imho by updating the hall of fame, the blog etc.

Please don't misunderstand- you're still doing a really good job, Janina and I'm convinced we all will do our best to keep this page/forum alive.

[Janina]

You are right, I'm annoyed by myself for not doing the blog posts and hall of fame updates on a regular base. I noticed the hall of fame wasn't visited by a lot of people, but I should at least continue the blog posts. I have no particular reason for not doing it... When a contest ends I update the forum threads and often think: "Don't forget to write a blog post as well!". And then things happen in real life, I work and suddenly a week is over and then another week. This should be something I can find the time to do, but I often don't. It's a vicious circle. I want more people to notice the contests, but when nobody comments the blog posts I don't care that much anymore... then I miss the blog posts and less blog posts mean even less people who notice the contests.

Regarding the platform: I would prefer to not run the contests here anymore because the software is so bugged. We often cannot see the pictures when we want to vote and I haven't found a fix for this error. And the whole thing looks very dated... If I post the link to the contests on facebook nobody cares, and I guess it's because it's not intuitive. People are used to things being easy now.

My favorite solution would be to combine the votes from different platforms (voting on sp-studio.de + Facebook likes + Instagram likes) so we can reach everybody, but I guess this means I'd have to do the calculations myself.

[Janina]

I'm doing a couple of small design changes right now, mainly regarding the front page. Just in case you wonder what's going on there.

[Janina]

The next contest will start on Tuesday and I will test a new system for this (social media based). Let's give it a try and see what happens.

But I am not sure about the topic yet. Waat are "easy" but interesting topics in your opinion? Since it's a new platform we coul recycle an old topic which was popular.

80 contest so far. Let's hope the new way gives a push in the participation rates.

The next one will be my 70th participation in the contest without fails. Six years of SP-S contests for me.

[Eggyslav]

Congrats Strider! Other than that, I already proposed a topic for a contest: Theatre!

[Janina]

I am not sure if this is a good idea for the start because most younger people don't have a close connection to theater and even think it's boring. I think movies or a genre in general (like comedy or horror... this could also apply to theater) speak to a wider audience.

[Janina]

The test contest is finished and I feel like it worked pretty well. It might not be a huge boost in numbers, but at least a small one. The big advantages are the lack of errors and the easier submissions without registration. This worked very smoothly.

I am not 100% happy with the voting yet because now we have Facebook AND this forum. But Facebook has the bigger audience and I don't want to loose those of you who don't use Facebook. So I guess it will stay this way until somebody has a better idea. And it is a bit annoying to have two threads per contest because of the vote, but I cannot imclude votes in the middle of threads.

What do you think? What do you like, what should be changed?

I miss the possibility to rate the works (from 1 to 5 or 1 to 3...), not only giving one 'like'.

I'm new, so keep this in mind, but how about a shorter voting period? I wonder if people forget they've submitted something?

[Janina]

Right now we have 20 days to submit and 10 days to vote (or "until the end of the month"). I don't think a shorter voting period would make it better, because you can vote directly after the submission period. And I'd like to have at least one full week for people who only have time during the weekends.

Or do you mean a shorter submission period? This could make a difference... In the beginning of the contests it used to be 15 days and I though more time means more submissions. But I am open to new ideas and get your point that some might forget about the contest when the voting starts 19 days after their submission. Do others feel like 20 days is too much?

I was thinking of the voting period, actually, although I guess it just feels longer because of the submission period.

[Janina]

Please have a quick look at this. I found a way to implement an easy voting system directly on SP-Studio.de (wordpress). What do you think of this? Right now you need to click twice to exit the big view, but I think I will be able to fix this. I haven't edited it yet because I wanted to show it to you first.

http://www.sp-studio.de/sp-studio-contest-vote/

It's really easy to use (for me and the voter) and works like Facebook, but you don't need a Facebook account. I noticed some of you did not upload pictures in the last contests and it might be because of the Facebook votes. So I hope this will be better. You can like as many pictures as you want and in the end the one with the most likes wins. This could be shown on the front page instead of a single page, but I have to make sure every picture has the same chance to get noticed.

I found another WordPress plugin which should be able to provide the star ratings some of you are missing. But unfortunately this one would cost 30 $... So I am not sure it this is worth it. And I haven't found a demo for it, because the official demo does not show ratuings. I'd be willing to spend those 30 $ if I'd know for sure more people will use star ratings. But I don't even know yet if they want to vote at all. Perhaps I should try the one with the likes first to see how a vote directly on the website is accepted by the visitors? I don't want to change the system all the time, but right now we haven't found a good solution for the vote yet.

The upload still works great, this month I already got a nice amount of pictures. So I won't change anything there.