by Bright Ewuru | Aug 21, 2024 | Articles
When running an organisation or company, building a community is vital. An integral part of building a community is keeping them engaged. Contests or competitions are fun ways to spark some excitement in your community.
Innovative contests can positively impact your community in multiple ways. First, it breeds stronger cohesion, a sense of belonging and pride. A competition can encourage your community members to form teams in order to achieve a common goal. Such cooperation forms a strong bond and when a team wins, a sense of accomplishment follows.
The competitions encourage creativity, helping participants refine and develop existing or new skills. They also provide a platform for the members to display their distinctive talents and get involved in the community’s activities.
What’s more, competitions provide networking opportunities for community members. They help generate publicity and attract positive attention for your organisation and brand. They’re also a good way to celebrate diversity and demonstrate inclusivity within the community.
Let’s examine 6 creative contest ideas to keep your community engaged.
The visual arts present an array of creative competition ideas for community engagement. A popular creative competition idea is a photography contest. If you host a photography contest, provide a list of items for participants to photograph. Set rules regarding the theme and setting of the photos. These details will determine the kind of photos that the participants will submit.
Another artistic expression that can serve as a competition idea is sculpture creation. Community members interested in this sort of contest will carve hard materials, whether wood or stone, into works of art. Consider challenging participants to trim vegetation in unrestricted public places into breathtaking figures.
Similarly, you can host a public painting competition where contestants have to create a painting of an object placed before them in the presence of the audience.
Another creative competition idea is a music contest. You could set up a contest for competitors to perform their original songs or coverage of some other popular song. They can perform individually or in groups. Alternatively, you could explore an instrument challenge to see how well the contestants play musical instruments.
Another option is a dance competition. Dancing is a naturally engaging activity, so such a contest will help keep your community entertained and active. Some dance competition ideas include contestants dancing to a particular beat, squaring off or even showing off diverse styles of dancing.
Literary competitions are also good ways to keep your community enthralled. You could set up a short story contest where participants write an exciting short fictitious story, following specific rules relating to word count, theme, etc. A related idea for a competition is a poetry contest. Such a competition requires participants to write original poems following any instructions you put in place.
You’re welcome to take it further by providing a platform for the participants to perform their poems. It could be in-person or virtual. Literary competitions are captivating because they give your community members the opportunity to demonstrate their imaginative power and proficiency with words.
For more community involvement, you can spice up your competitions (pun intended!) by hosting a cooking contest. Cooking is a part of life and the love for good food is something everyone has in common. So, it should capture the interest of many.
Your organisation could host a cook-off, as a culinary contest in which participants prepare food outdoors. Likewise, you could have a pie-baking contest to find out which participant makes the best pie.
Interestingly, you can host a cooking contest that’s based on artistic presentations. Challenge the participants to prepare food that’s as visually appealing as it’s satisfying to taste. Also, instead of staging a contest that involves preparing something edible, test your contestants on their knowledge of recipes.
Prefer to keep the contest online? Consider creating a social media competition for your community members. Besides it being a great engaging experience, it’s also a smart way to market your brand across social channels. A caption contest is an exciting competition; post a picture and ask your followers to caption it.
This will make your social media engagement skyrocket and keep your community entertained.
Another exciting social media-related competition idea is one based on user-generated content. Challenge the participants to submit content—a picture or video of themselves using your product or engaging in another activity—for you to reshare. The content that gets the most engagement wins.
Other creative competition ideas to hold your community’s attention are contests that focus on health and the environment. Organise a sports competition for your community members. Sporting activities such as marathons, sprints, soccer games and basketball matches are just some of the few contests you can set up.
These games will promote physical health and forge a stronger bond among the participants.
Activities that concentrate on sprucing up the environment are fantastic options too. A fun idea is to challenge participants to gather a certain measure of plastic waste in a defined location; those who collect up to that amount will receive a prize. This will help reduce plastic waste immensely in that area.
Also, consider a contest that rewards participants for recycling waste products. They receive prizes for converting waste materials that would otherwise serve as pollutants into useful products.
These online and offline competition ideas are fun ways to keep your community occupied and interested in your organisation and brand. They’ll foster unity, skill enhancement and networking in the community. Also, they’ll ensure your organisation stays top-of-mind.
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