How to create a Writing Contest

1. Introduction.

2. Step by step.

2.1. Create your campaign.

2.2. Configure the text submission.

2.2.1. Participants write their text.

2.2.2. Participants upload their text.

2.3. Other configurations.

3. Other specifications.

4. Related content.

1. Introduction.

With Cool Tabs, you can create a writing or text contest in which, to participate, users must upload or write their text and complete a data form.

You can make the entries public by activating the public list of participants, so other users can see them, and enable a voting period for those entries.

With the winner selection tool, you can choose the winner in three ways: manually among all participants, manually among the most voted, or automatically, awarding the win to the most voted entry.

VIEW DEMO WRITING CONTEST

2. Step by step.

2.1. Create the campaign.

Before setting up the contest, create your campaign and define its basic settings. If it's your first time using Cool Tabs, this tutorial shows you how to configure the basic sections of a campaign and the settings we recommend for it to work properly:

How to get started creating a campaign: basic settings.

If you have questions, contact us at help@cool-tabs.com.

2.2. Configure the text submission.

Next, decide how participants will submit their text: by writing it directly in a form, or by uploading a file. Both options are explained below.

2.2.1. Participants write their text.

You can enable a text field so participants can write their entry directly:

1) Go to the 'Entry form' section, 'UGC Campaigns' tab.

2) Activate the 'A question must be answered to take part' option.

3) Write the question.

4) Mark the answer as mandatory and set the maximum answer length.

This is how the entry form would look for the user:

2.2.2. Participants upload their text.

If you'd rather have users upload a file instead of writing their text, you can set this up in the 'Quiz' section:

1) Check the option 'I don't want to assign points or categories to the answers', to use the Quiz simply as a file submission form.

2) Add a question with a clear statement. E.g.: "Upload your writing".

3) In the 'Answer' tab, select 'The participant must upload a file'.

This is how the entry form would look for the user:

2.3. Other configurations.

2.3.1. Public entries list.

If you want users to see who has participated, make the list of participants public:

1) Go to the 'Entries list' tab in the 'Participations' section.

2) Check the 'Enable public participation' option.

If the contest includes voting, this step is mandatory: entries must be public so users can view them and vote. We also recommend sorting entries by number of votes.

2.3.2. Votes.

Writing contests are often combined with voting: a period during which users can access and vote for the content uploaded by participants. To enable voting:

1) Go to the 'Votes' section.

2) Activate voting on the entries.

3) Set the dates for the voting period.

4) Determine how many times each user can vote. By default, a user can vote once per entry.

Remember: for users to be able to vote, you need to have the public participants' page enabled (see section 2.3.1).

If you have only enabled anonymous login for campaign registration, users will be able to vote by providing their email, using their Google/Gmail, Yahoo, or Microsoft/Hotmail account.

You can also set the following restrictions and filters on voting:

Publicly show who has voted for each entry (their avatar and name will be displayed on that entry's page), so users can see how their favorite is doing.

Apply our anti-fraud system, which lets you:

• Restrict voting to specific countries.

• Block voters from possible vote-exchange networks.

• Block repeated votes from the same IP within a time period you set.

2.3.3. Entry moderation.

If you want to review every entry before it becomes visible in your campaign, activate moderation:

1) Go to the 'Advanced' tab in the 'Participations' section.

2) Enable the 'Enable moderation' option. From now on, you'll need to review and accept each entry before it becomes public.

2.3.4. Winner selection.

Once the contest's participation period is over, you can select the winners. See the tutorial: How to select winners and obtain your Certificate of Validity.

3. Other specifications.

The Gold and Diamond plans include the writing/text contest feature. You can try it with our 7-day free trial, available for any of our plans.

If you have questions, contact us at help@cool-tabs.com.

4. Related content.

How to access the URL of your campaign to publish it.