Tutorial: How to create a 'Pick Your Favorite' contest – Easypromos - Online Helpdesk

The "Pick your favorite" application allows you to present photos, texts or videos in a public gallery so that users can vote on their favorite proposal. You will be able to fully customize the gallery and activate voting so that photos, texts or videos can be voted on.

The "Pick your favorite" contest can be set up through two different modalities. This tutorial explains how to create the contest in Gallery mode. The other option available is Survey mode. Find out which type of contest is right for you.

The content of the tutorial is as follows:

1. General description

With the Pick Your Favorite app you can present photos, texts and videos in a public gallery and let users vote for their favorite. You will be able to fully customize the gallery and enable voting so that photos, text and videos can be voted for.

This application can be used in two scenarios:

The first is to facilitate participation of contestants in photo and video contests, since the administrator will be the one who uploads all the content to the gallery. For example: by submitting the photo or video of the contestants.
The second scenario is to use this application as a survey to let users pick and vote for their favorite proposals. For example: pick your favorite logo, pick your favorite outfit or dress, and vote your favorite color or flavor for the chance to enter a final prize draw.

Depending on one scenario or the other, the contest may be created using two different application formats:

Gallery format: Users access the contest just to vote. This means that users don't fill in a registration form, but they simply visit the gallery and vote for their favorite. See Demo. This tutorial explains how to create the contest with this modality.
Survey format: The content to be voted is presented by using the quiz system, and users fill in a form in order to complete their participation. This allows you to perform a draw among all participants. See Demo. This modality requires using the "Survey" application.

Check here when we recommend using each modality in order to decide which format suits you best.

2. Set up of the Pick your favorite

In this tutorial we explain all the steps to create your Pick your favorite - "Gallery" format.

If you choose the "Survey" format, you must follow this tutorial to configure your 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 see a list of all the products available. Choose Pick Your Favorite to create a promotion which displays photo captions, short stories, photos, or videos, and asks users to vote for their favorite.

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'll find all your promotion settings and options. Below, we outline the most important sections:

Header. This displays the title of the promotion, the version (Premium or White Label), and other relevant information, such as the promotion ID number. The promotion status indicates whether the promotion is active, draft, 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 to show on an expired promotion page.
Link to the promotion. Use this URL whenever you share the promotion. Learn more about sharing here. The copy link button automatically copies the link, to make sharing even easier.
Activate Promotion. When the promotion is ready to launch, click this button to activate it. You'll be taken to the activation page, where you can review billing information and make payments.
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.
Side menu. All your promotion settings in one place.
View tutorial. This tutorial guides you step by step through the creation and management of your promotion.
Promotion dates controls the time zone and phases of the promotion.
Languages indicates the default language of the promotion. You can edit this if you wish.
Localization enables you to limit participation to one or several countries. Read more about country filters.
Next steps: Practical recommendations that will guide you in the creation and management of your campaign.

Top tip: the promotion ID number (#) is a unique identifier for each promotion. Quote this number if you need to contact the Easypromos support team with any issues. This will make it easier for us to review your settings and help you out.

Step 2. Prepare to upload photos, texts, or videos

The Easypromos platform includes lots of pre-set features, based on which version you've chosen. For Pick Your Favorite contests in Gallery mode, users can upload and vote for photos with captions, by default.

If that's the kind of contest you want to run, then go right ahead to Step 3 of this tutorial.

If you want a contest using photos without captions, text only, or videos, you will need to edit the pre-settings. Follow the steps below:

1. Go to the promotion Editor.

2. Go to Pages > Registration Form, in the left-hand menu. For this type of contest, users do not view or complete the registration form, so the "Registration Form" section is disabled by default.

Instead, the registration form serves as an internal tool for you to upload contest entries. That's why you must configure it so that you can upload the information you want that each voting participation contains in the application.

By default, when creating the contest the following fields are enabled:

"Media": It allows uploading of "Photo" type files. This field can be edited to allow uploading video files.
"Comments": It allows to add a descriptive text to each photo.

In case you need to modify any of these fields, you must first click the "Publish page" button and then you will see the fields appear:

1. Media field. This enables you to upload competition entries. If you want to upload videos, change "media type" to "only videos". If you only want users to vote for texts, you should delete this field by clicking the trash icon.

You can allow users to participate with both photos and videos.
You can make it optional to include photos or videos in competition entries.

Note: If you want to upload videos to the gallery, change the "Media type" option to "Videos only". By default, you can upload videos previously hosted on YouTube or Vimeo. If you need to be able to upload the video files directly, you must activate the "Video Hosting Extension", which has an additional cost of $99 (price per contest), which will be added to the cost of activating the contest.

2. Comments field. If you are running a contest with texts or photo captions, you can write the texts here. If you want to carry out a contest for photos or videos only, with no captions, delete this field by using the trash icon.

Note: The fields available in the dropdown menu (email, telephone, date-of-birth, etc.) are not public. If you want to add fields which will be visible in the public gallery, create them with the additional text field. Check here all the fields that can be configured in the registration form.

3. Additional text field. Use this field to publish extra details about each competition entry. Write the title and the short title for this field, and check the boxes to make it mandatory and and public.

Step 3. Configure voting options

Now check the configuration of the voting system by going to Gallery > Votes.

By default, the voting system is enabled. You can choose how you want the voting system to work in your contest, or disable it. Here are all the options available:

By default, the application is configured so that each user can cast only one vote. Read more about this setting.

Learn how the Easypromos platform works to prevent fraud.

Once you have configured these sections, leave the Editor and return to the promotion management page.

Step 4. Customize the Gallery page

Set how the public gallery will be displayed. Take a look at the option tabs:

1. Contents: Upload a header image for a smart look, and write an introductory message.

2. Layout: By default, the gallery uses a tiled layout, which presents a visually attractive collage. You can:

Decide if you want to use the Tiled gallery or the Vertical gallery.
Adjust gallery settings in more detail. Find out how here.

3. Options: Here you have the following options available:

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:
Anonymous participation. Activate this if you don’t want users' names and profiles displayed in the gallery.

In addition, you can set the first page of the contest. By default, users land on the gallery page. You can edit this so that users see the Welcome page first, for example. Click here to learn how to set it up.

3. Upload photos, texts, or videos

Access Participants from the left-hand menu to upload competition entries to the voting gallery.

Click "Add participants" to start uploading content.

Complete each entry by filling in the following fields:

Name and surname. The tool requires a name to process the entry, but it will not be displayed publicly. "Anonymous participation" is enabled by default for this type of contest.
Add a caption. This is the “Comments” field in the entry form where you can enter text, either alone or as a photo caption.
Upload your picture.

Once completed, click "Finish" and the new entry will appear in the list:

Repeat the process for each contest entry that you want to present in the public gallery.

4. Customize the design and finish the settings

Once you have configured the Pick your favorite 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.

5. 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 Pick your favorite contest you have two ways to assign the prize to the winners, according to your choice:

1. Manually: You can assign the prize manually to the entry that has received the most votes. Follow the steps of this tutorial to assign the prize manually to the most voted entry.

2. Randomly: You will be able to carry out one or more draws among all users who have voted in the contest and obtain a certificate of validity with the result of the raffles. Follow the steps of this tutorial to run the draw.

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

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