The participation process of a user content campaign refers to both the acts of creating and submitting the specified user content (e.g. creating a selfie and submitting it to a specified brand hashtag).
A simple participation process is one that requires minimal user effort to create and submit, and which thus reduces the risk of participation dropoff due to frustration or decreased interest. The simpler the participation process, the lower the participation costs.
The complexity of a user content campaign’s participation process may be measured in the minimum number of steps it requires of a reasonable user. Calculating via steps reveals a large spectrum of complexity in user content campaigns, exemplified below.
High Complexity: Apartment Therapy
Currently in its 10th year, the Apartment Therapy Smallest Coolest Home Contest challenged readers of this interior design blog to submit design profiles for their small apartments, for the chance to win one of four $1,000 gift cards to Joybird Furniture. Each user-submitted apartment design profile included 5 pictures, a floorplan, and written responses to two questions (What I love about my small home and Three of my best tips and tricks for creating a successful small space).
Significant participation steps in the Apartment Therapy campaign:
1. Clean your home
2. Take 5 photos
3. Upload photos to computer
4. Measure home for floorplan
5. Create digital floorplan
6. Write responses to questions (What I love about my home and Three of my best tips and tricks for creating a small space)
7. Visit Apartment Therapy submission page
8. Submit entry
Medium Complexity: Benefit Cosmetics
Benefit Cosmetics ran a campaign within reddit makeup communities challenging users to share their best winged eyeliner looks for the chance to win free eyeliner.
Significant participation steps in the Benefit Cosmetics reddit campaign:
1. Create a winged eyeliner look
2. Take a picture
3. Visit Imgur, reddit’s preferred image hosting service
4. Upload photo to Imgur
5. Visit the Benefit Cosmetics contest page on reddit
6. Post a link to the Imgur picture of the winged eyeliner look
Low Complexity: Dunkin Donuts And Shark Week
A joint campaign between Dunkin Donuts and Discovery Channel’s Shark Week challenged users to submit selfies of themselves taking vicious shark-like bites out of doughnuts to #ddsharkweek on Instagram or Twitter.
Significant participation steps in the Dunkin Donuts-Shark Week campaign:
1. Get a doughnut
2. Open Instagram or Twitter
3. Take a huge shark-like bite and take a selfie
4. Submit the photo with #ddsharkweek
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