Tutorial: How to create a Photo Contest – Easypromos - Online Helpdesk

With the Photo Contest application, you can organize an online contest to collect user-generated content (UGC) and showcase it in a public gallery. This tool allows you to engage your community by encouraging them to participate with their own photos and, if you wish, enable voting to boost the contest’s visibility and increase audience interaction.

In addition, you can easily share the contest on your social media channels, embed it on your website, or promote it in physical locations such as stores and public spaces, helping you expand your brand visibility and attract new users.

In this tutorial, we’ll guide you step by step through the process of setting up and customizing your contest to get the most out of it.

These are the contents of the tutorial:

1. Overview

The Photo Contest application allows you to organize an online contest to obtain user-generated content, which you can display in a public gallery and enable voting to help viralize the contest. The Photo Contest will allow you to:

Completely customize the registration form with the data you want to obtain from the participants.
Publicly display the photos uploaded by users in the contest gallery and enable the voting system so that the photos can be voted on.
Manage and moderate all photos uploaded by users to control which photos appear published in the gallery and are valid for the contest.
Decide how you want to determine the winner(s) of the contest: by votes, through a jury, or by running a random draw.
Download the original photos uploaded by users.

2. Create the promotion

Below we explain all the steps to create your Photo Contest:

1. Access your Easypromos dashboard and log in with your email and password to manage and create your promotions.

2. Next, click on the "Create new promotion" button to start creating your promotion.

3. The available products will be presented. Select the "Photo Contest" application under the "Contests" section:

3. Contest Participation Settings

When creating the Photo Contest, the template comes with two different participation stages:

"Photo Upload" stage, which allows users to participate by uploading their photo to the contest.
"Photo Gallery" stage, which allows users to participate by voting in the contest.

Below, we describe the different configuration options for each stage type.

3.1. Users participating by uploading a photo

The contest allows you to configure the type of content users can upload. Primarily, these will be photos, but you can also include videos, PDFs, or links, and you can enable pre-moderation so that content is not published until you have validated it.

To configure the different participation options for users who want to upload a photo to the contest, you must go to the Editor > Participation Stages and select the "Upload photos" stage.

You will find the following configuration tabs:

1. "Options" Tab: here you will find all the configuration options for the stage:

Stage name: this is the name that will be displayed on the stage distribution screen.
Stage description: optionally, you can describe what this participation stage entails, which will also appear on the stage distribution screen. This is where you describe this participation stage, indicating to users that they need to upload a photo.
Dates: allows you to schedule the start and end date of participation for this stage.
Stage image: this is the image that will identify the stage on the stage distribution screen.
Participation frequency: you can determine the number of times users can participate in this stage as well as the participation frequency, which can be:
- Daily
- Hourly
- Weekly
- Total

2. "Requirements" Tab: optionally, before the participation screen in the stage, the promotion can present Requirements as a complement to the user's participation. This is an additional action that users must perform before they can participate. Available Requirements are: validate a code, upload a purchase ticket, watch a video, scan a QR code, or condition participation on having already entered another stage.

Click here to learn more about the Participation Requirements.

3. "User-generated content" Tab: Here, you can configure and customize the participation screen for the stage. You will find three different tabs:

A. Nomination Information

If you need to collect more information about the participant's photo, you can enable the "Request Candidate Information" option.

When enabled, a new page will be added to the content upload process, which the user will need to complete with basic information about their photo and their entry:

Specifically, you can configure the following fields to require additional information about the participant's entry:

1. Hide Name. Allows users to enter a name for their entry, such as a pseudonym, stage name, or alias. If this option is not enabled, the First name and Last name provided in the registration form will appear in the public Gallery.

2. Label for Name field. Allows you to modify the title of the "Name" field to another term (e.g., "Pseudonym").

3. Request a Short Description. Enables a text field where the participant can add a description to the photo.

4. Request a Profile Picture. Allows the user to upload a profile picture.

5. Request Country of Participation. Allows the user to indicate their country.

6. Request Links and Social Networks. When enabled, a text field will be automatically added where the user can optionally provide an external link (e.g., link to their website, link to a PDF, etc.). Additionally, various social media platforms will be added for the user to optionally complete.

7. Additional Fields. Allows you to request additional fields to complete the user's participation. By default, these fields will be private and only available to administrators. However, you can choose to make them public to display additional information in the contest gallery.

B. Multimedia content

Here you will find all the configuration options for the participation mechanics, which is the upload of a photo to participate in the contest. For this reason, the template comes with the "Allow photo and image file uploads" option activated, which will allow users to upload images (accepted formats: PNG, GIF, JPG).

Additionally, if you wish, you can enable other content formats that users can upload to the contest, described below:

Video files (.MOV, .MP4, .AVI, .MPEG, .WMV, WEBM, .3GP, .FLV, .OGV, .ASF, .MPG, .M4v): enable this option if you want to allow users to upload videos from their device.
YouTube videos: enable this option if you want to allow users to enter the URL of a video previously published on YouTube.
Text-only content: enable this option if you want to allow users to upload texts. Recommendation: use this field to ask users for texts of a maximum of 3000 characters (about 500 words). For longer texts, it is recommended to use the PDF documents field.
PDF documents: enable this option if you want to allow users to upload a PDF document to participate.
External link-based content: enable this option if you want to allow users to upload theURL of an external link.
Instagram photos and videos: this option allows the user to connect their Instagram profile to select a photo or video published on their profile (available for both public and private Instagram profiles). For the user to select a post, they must authorize Instagram permissions. Additionally, it can be limited to posts with a specific hashtag.
TikTok videos (public videos only): this option allows the user to connect their TikTok profile to select a video published on their profile. For the user to select a video, they must authorize TikTok permissions. Additionally, it can be limited to videos with a specific hashtag.

Additionally, in the "Options" section you can configure the following options:

Min./max. number of files: this option allows you to define the minimum and maximum number of media files you allow to be uploaded in each user's entry (maximum 5 per entry).
Maximum file size: configure the maximum file size of the media files you allow (minimum 1MB and maximum 500MB).
Hide file description: allows you to hide the media file description box. This option is useful when the administrator does not want any file description.
Mandatory file description: this option will require the user to accompany the media content with a mandatory description.

C. Other options

In this tab you will find the following configuration options:

1. Enable the option to pre-moderate entries before publishing them: this option allows photos not to be published in the public gallery of the contest until the administrator validates and authorizes them for publication.

Check out this tutorial for all the steps to moderate user-uploaded content.

2. Tags: It allows presenting users with a series of tags so they can label their participation in the contest. This functionality organizes the contest content into categories, enabling users to filter the gallery by these tags and quickly find the content associated with each tag.

Discover how the Tag system works in this video.

3. Cover: you can allow users to create a cover with a title and description for their entry. This is recommended if users can upload more than one photo to participate.

3.2. Users participating by voting

Additionally, you can enable voting so that all photos uploaded by users to the gallery can be voted on.

To do this, users who want to participate in the contest by voting must access the Contest Gallery, which is the page where all the photos uploaded by participants are displayed.

3.2.1. Voting User Experience

What will the participation experience be like for the user who wants to vote in the contest? The promotion consists of different pages that the user will go through when interacting with the promotion to vote. Together, these different pages will form the structure of the promotion and the participation flow that the user will follow to complete the promotional mechanics.

Specifically, to vote in the contest, the participation flow will be as follows:

When accessing the promotion for the first time, the user accesses the Welcome page, where they can see the button to access the Contest Gallery, which presents all the photos that users can vote on.
Before voting, the user must identify themselves using one of the enabled Login methods, and if it is their first time participating, they must register by completing the registration form.
If the user is already registered, they only need to log in to vote again.
After identifying themselves, the user will see the participation information they are about to vote on to confirm their vote.
Finally, if email validation is enabled, the user must confirm their email address for the vote to be counted.

3.2.2. How to Enable and Configure Voting

To configure the different participation options for users who want to vote on a photo, you must go to the Editor > Participation Stages and select the "Photo Gallery" stage:

You will find the following configuration tabs:

A. Options

In this tab, you can configure how often users are allowed to participate. The number of votes allowed per user will correspond to the number of participations they have.

Note: Each user can only vote for the same entry once per participation. For example, if the participation frequency is set to 2 votes per day, the user can vote for the same participation twice a day.

B. Voting gallery

When creating the promotion, the voting system is enabled by default, but if needed, you can check if voting is enabled through the "Enable voting system" option, which you will find in the "Voting Gallery" tab within the configuration of the "Photo Gallery" stage:

The "Voting Type" option allows you to configure how you want the voting system to work in your contest. You can choose between two different methods:

Simple Votes (1 vote = 1 point) - default option: In this type of voting, each image voted will receive 1 point. Additionally, you can set the minimum and maximum number of images to vote on (minimum 1, maximum 10).
Advanced Votes (1 vote = X points): In this type of voting, users can decide the number of points to assign to each image. As an administrator, you need to configure the different point levels and define the points users can give for each level.

Additionally, you have the option to activate a page showing the ranking of the most voted entries, which publicly displays the number of votes each participant has received. This will create a new page, accessible from the Gallery, showing a ranking of the votes received by the participants in the contest.

Note: If the option "Publish the number of votes and the ranking of the most voted" is not activated, the Gallery will only show the participations without displaying the votes for each participation. Therefore, the number of votes for each participation will only be visible internally to the contest organizer.

3.2.3.How to View the Voting Log

In the "Users" section of the promotion, you can see the contest voting status at any time.

Specifically, once in the "Users" section, click on "Votes," and you will see the list of gallery participations, where you can see the total number of votes each photo has received and even sort them to see the users with the most votes. Additionally, by clicking on "View," you can see the names of the users who voted for each participation:

In addition, the following two options are also available:

Export all votes: This option allows you to download a list of all votes and voter information.
Export results: This option allows you to download a list with the final voting results, showing a ranking of participants/candidates ordered by the points (votes) obtained.

4. Gallery Configuration

The gallery is the page where all the photos uploaded by users will be displayed.

Therefore, the gallery must always be connected to the "Upload your photo" stage to display all the photos users upload in the gallery.

In the stage list of the editor, you can check that the "Upload your photo" stage is connected to the gallery:

Below we explain the different options available to configure the gallery. To do this, access the "Photo Gallery" stage.

4.1. Date Configuration

The start and end dates of the stage will determine when users can access the gallery to view the photos uploaded by participants. Additionally, if voting is enabled, these dates will also determine the period during which users can vote.

4.2. Gallery Visibility: How to Enable/Disable Access to the Gallery for Unregistered Users

The contest administrator can control the access and visibility of the contest photo gallery at all times.

By default, the contest gallery is visible and accessible to all users who access the contest, including users who have not yet registered. Thus, users who have not yet identified themselves to participate in the contest can access the contest gallery and see its content:

However, unregistered users can only view and share the photos published in it. If they want to participate in the contest by voting for one of the photos, the system will ask them to identify themselves, and if it is their first time, they will also need to register.

Alternatively, the administrator can limit access to the contest gallery to registered users only, so that only users who have already identified themselves can view, share, and vote on the photos. To do this, the administrator must go to the Editor > Participation Stages > Public Galleries section and uncheck the "Enable public galleries" box:

4.3. Options to Display Participant Information

As an administrator, you can configure what information you want to display about the participants in the public gallery. To do this, go to the "Photo Gallery" stage settings, and in the "Voting Gallery" tab, you will find the following options:

Show participant's name: Allows you to show or hide the participant's name.
Show participation avatar: Allows you to show the candidate's profile photo (if any).
Show participant's country: Allows you to show the candidate's country (if any).
Order of participations in the gallery: Allows you to define the order in which the participations will be presented in the gallery.

5. Participant registration system

To participate in the Photo Contest, users must log in and register. You can select which methods users can use to identify themselves: email, a mobile number, or their Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, or Twitch account. If it is the first time a user is identifying in the contest, they must also complete the registration form and accept the Terms and Conditions and privacy policy of the contest. The form is 100% customizable.

The Registration Form page is designed to collect the personal data of all participating users and manage legal consents: terms and conditions, privacy policy, and, if applicable, newsletter subscriptions or other permissions.

This form must be completed by any user who accesses the promotion, whether to participate by uploading a photo or video, or simply to vote in the gallery.

If you need to collect additional information from users who upload a photo or video, you can configure a second form from the section Participation Stages > Stage > Photo Upload > Candidate Information, as explained in this part of the tutorial.

To configure which Login system you want to enable in the promotion, go to Editor > Pages > Login and Registration > Login, where you can configure how you want users to identify themselves to participate in the promotion. Learn more about the different types of Login and all configuration options here:

Note: Easypromos allows SSO integration with external user authentication systems. Contact us for more information.

If it is the user's first time participating, the first step will be to complete the registration form, which they must fill out with the information configured by the administrator.

To configure the registration form fields, go to Editor > Pages > Login and Registration > Registration, and click on the "Add element" button to add the fields you want to ask users to fill out to participate:

6. Fraud Control System

The participation process of the contest includes the Easypromos security system, which is activated by default. Its purpose is to block attempts at fraudulent votes and provide tools to analyze the legitimacy of votes. The Easypromos Security System consists of:

Preventive measures:

Detection and blocking of malicious email addresses: includes temporary emails, invented emails, and email aliases. Additionally, Easypromos maintains a database of fake email domains.
Anti-Robots system: implements mechanisms for detecting and blocking votes attempts from automated bots.
Detection and blocking of malicious IPs: Easypromos maintains a database of malicious IPs, VPNs, and proxies.
Filters and restrictions based on country and IP:allows limiting the registration and connection frequency per IP, as well as restricting connection countries.
Security level indicator: a tool that helps the organizer configure a secure contest, including alerts in case the anti-robot system or double verification of email addresses is disabled.

Reactive measures:

Security center with records of blocked events: each time the system blocks fraudulent access, a record is generated for the administrator to be able to analyze and discover other potential fraudulent patterns.
IP Address analysis tool:allows you to view all activity from an IP address, see its properties and eventually block in a click all users from that IP along with their votes.
Domain Analysis tool: allows you to visualize the distribution of email domains registered in the contest, making it easier to detect fake or temporary emails to block their votes and users.
Easypromos offers a dedicated security team that periodically reviews all generated alerts and blocks users and votes in case fraudulent activity is detected.
All security measures are centrally managed from the Contest Security Center.

If the administrator or Easypromos blocks users and votes through reactive measures, the percentage of fraudulent votes will be displayed in the contest’s vote management tool. These fraudulent votes can then be removed.

7. Sending Emails to Participants

With the email platform included in the promotion, you can establish periodic and automated communication with users participating in the contest.

Below are some examples of emails you can create:

Send an email to all participants to thank them for their participation, including the link to their individual photo in the contest gallery, so they can share it to get votes.
Inform users whether their photo has been approved or rejected by the person responsible for moderating the content uploaded by users in the contest.
Send an email to users who have voted in the gallery, including the name of the participant they voted for, along with the link to the individual photo they voted for.

Check out the different email sending options you can automate with the Email Platform.

8. Customize the design and complete the setup of the contest

Once you have configured the Photo contest, the next step is to complete the generic setup and other promotion options, such as customizing the design template to use your own colors and texts, adding your logo, entering the Legal texts of the contest, setting up viral content, etc.

Check out our tutorial to finish setting up and customizing your contest.

9. User Management, Statistics, and Winners

Once the contest has ended, you will have various tools available as an administrator for managing users and their entries. Below, we detail the tools available to you.

9.1. Moderation of User-Submitted Photos

If the pre-moderation option is enabled, the photos uploaded by users will not be immediately published in the gallery but will remain pending for the contest administrator to validate before they appear publicly in the gallery. Pending photos must be moderated using the "Candidate Management" tool.

To do this, follow these steps:

1. Within the Editor, go to the "Participation Stages" section and click on the "Candidate Management" tab:

2. Next, click on the folder where the entries are stored:

3. Clicking on it will display the different candidates, which are the users who have participated in the contest by uploading their photo.

This is an example of how a pending participation looks like:

Moderate the participation: You have the following actions to moderate the participation:
- "Active" to accept the participation and publish it in the gallery.
- "Rejected" to invalidate the participation so it does not get published in the gallery.
- "Pending" to mark the participation as pending again, so it does not get published in the gallery.
Edit participation: Allows you to access the participation content in case you need to apply some changes to the entry: edit the description, change the picture upon user's request, etc.
Add internal note: Allows you to add an internal comment to the participation.

Learn more about how the pre-moderation of user-uploaded photos works here.

9.2. User Management

From the "Users" section, you will have access at all times to the list of participating users, where you can perform the following actions:

View unique participants in the contest.
View the total entries in the contest.
Use participant management tools: delete users, filter participants by different criteria (registration data, number of entries, assigned prizes, etc.).
Export lists in .CSV format with the registered users' information.

Check out in detail all the participant management options available to you.

9.3. View Contest Statistics

From the "Statistics" section, you can obtain detailed information about the activity of users who participated in the promotion (number of registrations per day/hour, device used, etc.), as well as data on the different entries (entries per day/hour, device used, etc.).

Check out all the statistics you can obtain from the promotion to analyze the performance of your contest.

9.4. Manage and announce the winners

Easypromos provides a comprehensive Prize and Winner management system that allows you to create the prize or prizes you want to give away to reward participants. You can also configure how you want to assign the prizes and select the winners.

Specifically, for the Photo contest, you have several ways to assign the prize(s), according to your choice:

1. Randomly: you will be able to conduct one or multiple draws among all participants or a subset of participants and obtain a validity certificate with the draw results. Follow the steps of our tutorial to run the draw

2. Manually: you can manually assign one or multiple prizes to participants of the contest. For example, you can assign the prize to participants who have received the most votes. Follow the steps of this tutorial to assign the prize manually .

3. Direct assignation of the prize(s): you can assign a promotional coupon or discount to all users after they upload their image or after voting in the contest. Follow the steps of this tutorial that explains how to create a coupon prize and assign it directly to all users after participating or voting in the contest.

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