This week: Mistakes Were Made Edited by: Jayngle Bells  
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Hey! I'm Jayne, your editor for this week's Contests and Activities newsletter.
I do my best to provide advice and strategies to improve contests and activities for both owners and writers. |
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Have you ever put together an idea you thought was so fun, so unique, so absolutely fantastic...only to have it fall completely flat with your audience?
What was your reaction to that? Did you assume nobody was interested? Perhaps you concluded it was a really bad idea (sometimes it is—but hear me out). Maybe you chastised yourself for putting it out there in the first place. That's my initial reaction to most things I fail at. Thankfully, I fail often, and I fail well. It's given me enough insight that I know the initial sting will wear off. You throw a little aloe on the self-inflicted burn and carry on. Unless, like me, you're allergic to aloe, in which case, the supposed burn-balm is just another square on the mistake-making bingo card of life.
Let me ask you a question: if your contest/activity/prompt got little to no response, did you ask anyone else what the problem might be? If you had a previously solid participant base, and have noticed it's declining, you could send out a small survey. Without asking, we're left guessing. It's easy to get lost in our own heads and make things out to be far worse or much more complicated than they actually are.
Well, Jayne, the crowd says, that works if you had entries. If we don't have any participants, how are we supposed to ask what they didn't like?
Harsh, but fair.
You could ask for some insights with a post on the newsfeed, potentially generating a wide spread of feedback. However, it may be more beneficial to simply approach people you thought were your target audience and just ask. Don't invite them to a pity-party—it's never a good look. Reaching out and asking, "hey, I had this [thing] going, and I didn't get any entries. Do you have any feedback or suggestions you could give me that might make this a bigger draw?" If you're not sure who your intended audience was (which is something you need to think about), you can approach almost anyone who runs and activity/contest and ask their opinion. I suggest getting a few different opinions, of course, and seeing where the common threads are. It's not always about bigger prizes, or more graphics, or simplifying the typeface.
I'll give my personal example. I know the writers for "The Daily Poem" will say it's not nearly as bad as I make it sound, and they are most likely right, since they're the ones that had to deal with it. It doesn't change the fact that it happened, and now that I've had a chance to think it through, maybe my mistake can help someone else.
With "The Daily Poem" , I try to give some off-the-beaten-path prompts. Some might even call them 'tough' or 'weird'. I think 'torture' was mentioned once. I don't actually try to do anything that is completely impossible. I look for things I find interesting, the kind of things I might want to try, and invite other people to try them with me.
What I sometimes forget is that I try the trickier things beforehand, to see if they really can work on a 24-hour deadline. Most of the time, the writers do a far better job in their 24-hours than I did. Other times, I pick something I already know how to do, because I thought it was fun, and I want other people to have fun, too.
What I did this time, though, was forgot that I knew what I was talking about, but didn't really bother explaining it. At least, I didn't explain it very well.
Dropping a poorly explained activity/contest/prompt on someone and expecting them to just "know" what's going on is a lot like assembling IKEA furniture. Frustrating, confusing, liable to be missing pieces, and possibly a little wobbly.
In short: it's not fun.
Remember, just like when we write, and we get multiple reviews that say, "I don't understand this part of the story," it's more than likely what we had in our heads didn't translate to the page. Crafting contests, activities and prompts is no different. It's human nature to fall into the 'I know what I meant' trappings of communication. If you've received no bites, fewer entries, more questions than normal, or even complaints, don't be afraid to ask.
You can't fix anything properly without first identifying the problem. So, ask. |
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Contests & Activities: September 14, 2022 Issue [#11562]
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