Whether you're a small-business owner who absolutely adores or totally abhors social media, email marketing company iContact has a contest for you.
The rapidly expanding Morrisville company is announcing today that it's offering $25,000 in cash prizes for the best videos submitted by small-business owners for its new contest, "Social Media: Love It or Hate It."
"We're right in the middle of this national debate about whether social media is an effective tool for small business," said Ryan Allis, CEO and co-founder of privately held iContact, which has 300 employees and generated $39 million in revenue last year. The company's software enables businesses and other organizations to create, send and track their email messages.
IContact is launching the contest in conjunction with its latest software update, which expands the social networking capabilities it offers its 71,000 customers. The new software enables small- and mid-sized businesses to post messages via Facebook and Twitter and measure how those messages resonate with their target audiences.
IContact conducted an online survey of its customers earlier this month and confirmed that they have a love/hate relationship with social media. Of the 2,700 customers who responded, 76 percent said they loved Facebook.
But 70 percent of respondents said they hated Groupon, which offers local deals on a daily basis.
"The sentiment about Groupon is that it's great for short-term sales bumps" but wreaks havoc with a company's profitability, Allis said.
Asked about their sentiments regarding social media overall, 80 percent of the respondents loved it and 20 percent hated it. (Love or hate were the only responses permitted in the survey.)
The deadline for submitting contest videos at social.icontact.com is Dec. 5. The recommended length: 60 seconds.
The videos will be posted online, with finalists selected by a combination of online votes plus a panel of iContact judges that will include Allis; subsequently, online voting alone will determine the winners.
Each of two first-prize winners - one in the love and one in the hate category - will receive a $10,000 prize. Runners-up in each category will receive $2,500 each.
