As social media becomes more and more prominent in the Internet space, there are many opportunities for businesses to engage their customers. Viral marketing is one way in which businesses can create a buzz around their products or services. What kinds of examples can we see from viral marketing? Videos, and with greater prominence, contests are trends we are seeing grow.

Contests are a great way for businesses to gain followers across social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Wildfire, a platform for building viral marketing campaigns, is helping businesses keep track of their contests. Businesses will now be able to manage campaigns across their websites, Facebook, and Twitter simultaneously. According to TechCrunch, the platform for a user is simple: “clicking a contest link will take you to a basic sweepstakes form, which includes a pre-populated Tweet that will alert your followers that you’ve just signed up for the contest. Tweet that out, and you’re presented with another quick form where you fill out your name and contact information, so you can be reached if you win.” The contests encourage users to retweet, reenter and share will all of their followers.

How does Wildfire fair for its clients? “The platform uses a wizard to set up the sweepstakes microsite, which companies can then customize with their rules, opt-in newsletters, and the appearance. Companies can also prompt entrants to their sweepstakes to start following their official Twitter accounts, which makes it easy for them to build up a larger audience”. With its many offerings, it seems that we will be seeing a lot of Wildfire in the future.