Organize a Photo Contest among your users and followers on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, and publish it on your favorite social network or on any website. You will have a complete management panel to configure and customize the contest, manage and moderate all the images and measure the results obtained.

The content of the tutorial is as follows:

1. General description

2. Set up of the Photo Contest

• Step 1. Create the promotion

• Paso 2. Participant registration system

• Step 3. Customize the Gallery page

• Step 4. Enable the voting (optional)

• Step 5. Enable Twitter/Instagram (optional)

3. Customize the design and finish the settings

4. Manage and publish the winners

1. General description

The Photo Contest application will allow you to organize an online photo contest to obtain content generated by your users, which you can display in a public gallery and, additionally, enable voting to help make the contest viral. 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.
• Enable participation from Twitter/Instagram to facilitate participation from these two social networks.
• Manage and moderate all photos uploaded by users in order 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 a random draw.
• Download the original photos uploaded by users by connecting your Dropbox account.

2. Set up of the Photo contest

Here we explain all the steps to create your Photo contest.

Step 1. Create the promotion

1. Access the Easypromos Control Panel and log in with your email address and password to manage and create your promotions.

2. Create a new promotion by clicking the green button.

3. You'll be presented with the products available. Choose ‘Photo contest’ to create your promotion. This option includes a registration form where the user can upload an image to participate.

4. As a next step, set up the following options:

• Organizing brand. As a first step, you should select or create an organizing brand for your promotion. This organizing brand is independent of any social network and works as a folder within your Easypromos account, in order to help organize the promotions that you create.
• Template version. Select which template you want to use to create your promotion: Premium or White Label.

Note: Compare here the features and functionalities included in each template.

5. After clicking on "Continue" button, you'll get access to the promotion management page, where you have all the options for configuring the promotion. Below, we outline all the most important sections.

1. Header. Here you'll see the promotion title, the version you've chosen and other relevant information such as the promotion ID number of the promotion. You'll also notice the Promotion status, which indicates the status of the promotion: Draft, Active or Expired, as well as if it’s about to start. Once the promotion period has ended, this field will be marked in red saying: Status: Expired. You can choose what you want to show on an expired promotion page.
   
2. Link to the promotion. This is the URL that you should use for sharing on all channels. You'll also see the Copy link button, which instantly copies the link to make sharing easier.
3. Activate Promotion button. When the promotion is prepared and ready to launch, click this button to activate it. You'll be taken to the activation page, where you can review billing information before paying for the promotion.
4. Test mode. This tool will allow you to carry out a real test of the promotion before activating it, in order to participate in it as users will when it is activated and thus be able to check that the promotion works as expected before launching it. More information.
5. Side menu. This displays all the promotion settings options.
6. View tutorial. This tutorial guides you step by step through the creation and management of your promotion.
7. Promotion dates and time zone allows you to set the boundaries of your promotion
   Languages indicates the default language. You can change this if you need to.
   Localization enables you to limit participation to one or several countries. (Localization is included by default). Learn more here
8. Next steps: Practical recommendations that steer you through the creation and management of your campaign.

Step 2. Participant registration system

In order to participate in the Photo Contest, users must register by filling in the registration form with the requested data.

To do this, go to the Editor > Pages > Registration Form, to customize the fields that you want to ask users to be able to participate:

Check the tutorial where we explain how to configure the promotion registration form.

Step 3. Customize the Gallery page

Configure how the public gallery of images uploaded by participants will look. In this section, you should focus on the following tabs:

1. Contents: You can upload a header image to give the gallery a more corporate touch. You can also add an introduction message.

2. Layout: All contests created come with a default tiled gallery layout. This displays more than one picture on the same line, making a more visually attractive collage.

In this section, you will find the following options:

• Decide if you want to use the Tiled gallery or the Vertical gallery.
• Customize gallery details. Find out how here.

3. Options. You will find the following options:

• Entries per page. This option allows to set up the number of pictures displayed per page within the Gallery.
• Order entries. This option allows to set up how you want the pictures to be ordered on the Gallery:
  • Most recent first.
  • Randomly.
  • Most voted first.
• Anonymous participation. Activate this if you don’t want users' names and profiles displayed in the gallery.

Note: You can enable pre-moderation so that the entries are not published automatically but remain as pending so that you can review them beforehand.

Step 4. Enable the voting (optional)

Access the "Votes" tab if you want to allow users to vote on entries.

By default, Photo Contests come with the voting system enabled. You can set up what type of voting system you wish to use. You can also disable the voting system from here.

In this section, you will find included many options:

Step 5. Enable participation via Twitter and Instagram (optional)

Normally, users participate by accessing the promotion and filling in the entry form. If you want to allow Twitter and Instagram users to participate from within their social networks, you can enable Twitter and Instagram integration. Users can then participate by posting with the mention+hashtag that you've picked for the contest.  

3. Customize the design and finish the settings

Once you have configured the Photo contest, the next step is to finish the configuration of the other options of the promotion, such as customizing the design template with your own colors and texts, introducing the legal bases, the viral content settings, etc. Check the tutorial to finish the configuration and customization of your promotion.

4. Manage and publish the winners

Easypromos provides a complete Prize and Winners Management system that will allow you to create the prize or prizes that you want to give to the users who participate in the contest, as well as configure how you want to assign the prizes and select the winners.

Specifically, for the Photo Contest you have two ways to assign the prize to the winners, according to your choice:

1. Randomly: You can run one or more draw among participants, or among a segment of participants, and obtain a certificate of validity with the results. Follow the steps of this tutorial to run the draw.

2. Manually: You can assign one or more prizes manually to your chosen winners. This is useful in voting contests and skills tests. We also recommend this option if your winners are selected by a jury, notary public, or the organizing brand. Follow the steps of this tutorial to assign the prizes manually.

Learn how to create prizes and select winners in the Prize management tutorial.