More than a year has passed since the introduction of the first COVID-19 lockdowns around the world. However, vaccination is speeding up; governments are asking people to stay at home. Eventually, the most responsible thing to do is to sit on your couch and connect to others via social media.
If you are one of the responsible couch sitters, then you feel the boost in the numbers of social media giveaways online. Their goals loo simple – enhancing business and attracting followers.
But, did you know that there are specific rules to follow if you want to organise one? Or that different platforms ultimately yield different results? And finally, that the chosen prize matters more than we thought it would?
Keep on reading if you want to answer the above questions and polish your skills in setting up social media giveaways.
Looking Beyond the Essence of Social Media Giveaways
As mentioned above, followers are crucial to any business owner or individual influencer on social media. Increasing it is the essence of the giveaways, but so are the engagements. Algorithms on social networks are sensitive to how many people are talking about your business. Eventually, it affects whether other people would see your posts or not.
Although the number of followers is essential, it’s more effective if they are engaged in your shared content. Giveaways also increase awareness of your brand, strengthen loyalty, and help acquire new customer data utilised for marketing campaigns.
Last but not least, it’s a very affordable marketing strategy. An alternative to social media giveaways are ads, a function suggested by the social platforms themselves. But beware, getting 100000 followers through Instagram ads might cost around 10000 USD (if you know what you’re doing). Via giveaways, you would spend something like 2000 USD and achieve the same.
CAUTION: The prices shown are average, and they may significantly differ for your case.
Tell me your purpose, and I will tell you the platform.
You can run social media giveaways on any social platform. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Youtube are the top ones. Nevertheless, what you need to pay attention to the most is not breaching their giveaway regulations. The logic of the giveaway regulations on these platforms is similar to each other.
So what is it all about?
According to Facebook giveaway guidelines, make sure to highlight that this platform is in no way involved in or bears no liability or responsibility. Remember, if you are caught in violation of the terms, platform administrators can delete your post or, even worse, page altogether.
Instagram rules are somewhat similar to Facebook; no involvement, no liability. These platforms also ask for a separate regulations page linked to your giveaway post. On Instagram, you cannot ask followers to tag themselves in anything they’re not related to enter the contest. IG asks for transparency, including in the rules and timelines of the contest you are hosting.
Want to know the best part?
You can synchronise giveaways through several apps, which is called cross-posting. Cross-posting helps enhance your reach, as well as engagement. All you need to do is to have accounts on several platforms and share your giveaway content simultaneously in each of them. Instagram and Facebook even allow automatic synchronisation.
Become a self-conscious giveaway host!
We got the rules right and picked our favourite platform for the giveaway, so what else?! Giveaway organisers should understand their objective. Your objectives could be increasing followers, enhancing engagement, strengthening your database on customers, promoting a new product, etc.
Here’s the thing:
Successful contest hosts know their followers and tailor the campaign according to their expectations, including the prize. The prizes should be relevant and real. Let’s say you are a small business making mugs. Don’t promise mugs to every other follower, as you might end up getting followers beyond your producing capacity.
Sometimes social media influencers set cash as the prize. That can be an act of goodwill, but if someone is reimbursing the giveaway hosts afterwards, it’s better to reveal the sponsors right away. Remember that honesty will save you from being banned.
Understanding the different levels of giveaways
Some giveaways have no outside support, and others have sponsors, usually big brands. Businesses attract influencers to use their follower base as a platform for promotion. Influencers can promote sponsored products through User Generated Content (UGC) – any video, image, text, or feedback created by people, not the brands. UGC is influential because it has a “human touch”.
Giveaway types and ideas in 2022
We said the prize is important for your giveaway, but so is the timeframe. Organisers should set the dates and the deadlines of the contest. Moreover, rules to follow and steps to enter the contest should be clear.
A word of caution, steps should be easy to implement. Especially if the price is not of a high value, your followers can lose interest.
In terms of steps to follow, I would like to highlight several types:
- Vote the winner: Followers vote for the preferred product, which then gifted as a prize. A photo contest is another good idea; your followers can vote for the winner;
- Sweepstakes is the easiest type. All followers should do to enter the competition is to write down their email and name in the comments section;
- #Hashtag template can help widen your community as participants should use the campaign-related hashtag while posting an image (you can also define the content of the image);
- “The caption and feedback” template is helpful to get dozens of UGC about the product. Feedbacks then can be showcased as testimonials.
- Tag and follow to win: probably the most common template. Participants should follow a host page or pages and tag one or more of their friends in the comments section;
- Loop giveaways offer big prizes and require potential entrants to follow a tremendous amount of other pages (sponsors), sometimes reaching close to 100. In turn, sponsors too should buy a slot for the price set by the organisers.
Picking the winner
A giveaway host should be open about its sponsors, (if any) collaborations, rules, timelines, and prizes. Otherwise, the organisers risk losing their follower base, trust and loyalty, or be blocked by the platform.
It’s also essential to pick the winner in an unbiased and straightforward manner. During “sweepstakes” or “tag and follow to win” contests, it’s better to use random winner pickers like Google’s Random Number Generator, Woobox, Rafflecopter, Gleam, or others.
A protip: Better to have more than one winner. This method will increase the interest in your contest and the number of grateful followers.
A protip #2: Be consistent in your giveaways and organise them from time to time. Thanks to the consistency and scheduling of your content, your followers won’t leave you and stay engaged.
To conclude, Social Media Giveaway is a great tool to enhance and grow your business online. If you want to entrust it to professionals to maintain a high-quality presence on social media, check out our social media services. Benefits are that for just 50 pounds per month, you’ll guarantee the success of your business on social networks.
