How to Run Social Media Giveaways to Increase Your Reach

Running a social media giveaway or contest is a great way to start an online conversation about your business. Not only can you increase your brand awareness, but you can also generate more leads.

After all, who doesn't like getting free stuff?

You'll win some brownie points for giving out the freebies and be able to build a positive brand image.

Another advantage of hosting a giveaway on social media is that you can promote your brand and landing page without being excessively promotional.

It's a strategy that can instantly create buzz around your brand on social media. Let's take a look at what goes into planning social media giveaways.

Disclosure: This content has a few affiliate links, which means if you click on them, I will get a commission (without any extra cost to you).

Things To Take Care of While Running A Social Media Giveaway

1. Understand Your Objective

Before you begin planning your giveaway, figure out why you want to run it. There are a lot of different campaigns to choose from. However, what you select should be based on your campaign objective.

Here are a few objectives that you can base your marketing campaign on:

• Increase Follower Count: You can use giveaways to build your audience on different social media channels.
• Grow Your Email List: As a part of giveaways, you can ask people to submit their email addresses. Through this, you can grow your mailing list and keep your fans updated about offers and promotions.
• Boost Brand Awareness: Giveaways can be a great way to make more people familiar with your brand. To increase brand awareness, you can ask people to tag their friends on your posts.
• Drive Engagement: Whatever your ultimate campaign objective is, you'll end up driving engagement with giveaways on social media. That's because brands usually ask people to like, comment, and share their posts to win the contest.
• Promote New Products: Giveaways are a great way to put the spotlight on your new line of products. They can help generate more leads and boost sales.

For instance, take a look at Birchbox's giveaway campaign on their Instagram account. They showcased their range of new products from Living Proof Inc and gave away exclusive sets to some lucky winners.

Image via Instagram

2. Pick a Social Media Platform

For any business, it's important to maintain a strong presence on social media. However, not all social media platforms are created equal.

Based on your target audience, industry, and niche, certain social media platforms may be better suited for your business.

Figure out which platform your audience spends most of their time on. You're more likely to get the attention of your audience on the platforms they are most active on.

While Instagram marketing is the preferred choice for most marketers, it may not always be the right choice for you. For instance, if your target audience is mostly stay-at-home moms, Pinterest would be a better choice for you.

3. Decide on the Prize

When it comes to giveaways, on social media or otherwise, people participate to win. So, you need to make sure that the prize you offer is appealing enough to them. If your prize isn't attractive enough, you may see low engagement.

It's also a good idea to choose a prize that is related to your brand. It could be anything from loyalty points and product samples to membership plans. Whatever you choose, make sure you're giving your customers a taste of your services or products.

Also, ensure that the reward you offer is proportional to the effort that participants have to put in.

For instance, if you ask your followers to like your posts, you can offer a few product samples. However, if you want them to upload photos using your branded hashtags, you need to raise the stakes.

 

Take a cue from Dominoes' social media giveaway. For a chance to win the $ 10,000 reward, Domino's asked fans to post their photos using the hashtag #PieceofthePieContest.

Image via Instagram

A reward worth $ 10,000 may be a bit too much for smaller brands. But you can take inspiration from this example and make sure you make your giveaway worthwhile for your audience. Pick a reward that motivates them to participate.

4. Draft a Plan

Once you're done making the major decisions regarding your social media giveaway, it's time to put things on paper. The first stage of running a giveaway campaign is to decide on the timeline.

Here are the factors you should clearly list to make your giveaway plan more concrete:

• Timeline : Set the dates when you plan to start and end the giveaway campaign. Don't forget to mention the end date in your captions. It's a great way to instill a sense of urgency.
• Rules: Who is eligible to participate in the contest? If you have any limitations about age, location, or any other factor, write it down clearly.
• Mode of participation: You should mention what a user must do to enter the contest.
• Prize: Your prize needs to be the star of your social media giveaway campaign. So, make sure you feature it prominently on your posts and in the caption.
• Winner announcement: When are you going to announce a winner? How many winners will you pick? Mention these details clearly and share them with your audience to keep them hooked.
• Posting Schedule: When it comes to giveaways on social media, you can't just post once and forget about it. Talk about it often on different social media platforms. You can also send your subscribers emails about it. Also, run social media ads if needed. Invest some time into writing a posting schedule.

5. Know the Rules

Before you post your giveaway, make sure you understand the rules regarding promotions. Each social media platform has different rules. So, based on the platform you've chosen, you'll have to read the rules.

For instance, Instagram's promotion guidelines state that you should make it clear that Instagram isn't directly involved in the campaign. This guideline is also applicable for promotional posts on Facebooks .

Additionally, Instagram does not encourage inaccurate tagging. So, if a person is not present in a photo, you shouldn't ask them to tag themselves in it.

However, it's acceptable to ask people to tag their friends in the comments section.

Twitter discourages the creation of multiple accounts. They also advise brands to include a rule that states that people found to be using multiple accounts for contests will be ineligible.

Some guidelines for posting promotional content on social media platforms may also be country-specific. Read up on all of the rules for the platform you've chosen.

6. Use the Right Tools

You're going to be flooded with entries once your social media giveaway goes live. It can quickly get overwhelming if you don't have a plan in place to track all the entries.

To make your job easier, you need to use the right tracking tools .

You can use Hootsuite to stay updated about the new entries on your post. This tool will allow you to track who is mentioning your hashtag and who is reposting your photos.

For hosting and designing your social media giveaway campaigns, here are the tools that you can use:

1. VYPER

Using VYPER, you can run giveaways, contests, and loyalty programs on various social media platforms. In addition to this, you can also design landing pages and embed forms using this tool.

If you want a quick design made, you can use their ready-made templates for your campaigns. Want to know the best part? Their free plan enables brands to collect up to 250 leads.

Image via VYPER

2. Rafflecopter

This tool provides an all-in-one approach to planning your giveaway. From choosing your entry methods to collecting entries, Rafflecopter can do it all for you.

Alternatively, you can also use Rafflecopter to host your social media giveaways.

Image via Rafflecopter

FAQs

Q1. What is a social media giveaway?

A. It is a promotional tactic where businesses or influencers ask their followers to perform certain actions to participate in a contest to stand a chance to win a free prize.

The actions could be tagging a few friends, liking and commenting on the post, following certain accounts, etc.

Q2. What are good giveaway ideas?

A. Anything that is related to your business is a good option for a giveaway. For example, if you have a hotel business, maybe you can give away a free stay as a prize.

Or, if you are a retailer, you could give away free products for your social media giveaways. The key is to make sure that you ask participants to do as much as you can to participate.

Q3. How do I run a social media giveaway?

A. Simply create a post with an image that says “giveaway” and mentions the contest, explain the rules in your caption, use some relevant hashtags, and post.

If you need some giveaway templates or any other help, you can use a social media giveaway tool like VYPER. It can help you design and run social media giveaways without any hassle.

Q4. How do I do a giveaway on Facebook?

A. The process for doing a giveaway is almost the same for all social media platforms, so follow the steps mentioned above.

In fact, you can run a giveaway on one platform and promote it on multiple platforms to reach more people.

Q5. Is it illegal to do giveaways on Facebook?

A. No, you can run a giveaway from a group, event, or page. However, you are not allowed to run a giveaway on personal timelines.

Q6. How do I pick a winner for my Facebook giveaway?

A. You can use a random winner generator to keep things fair and transparent. There are many such tools available online.

Also, giveaway tools like VYPER and Rafflecopter have features for winner selection that you can use.

Q7. How do you do a successful Instagram giveaway?

A. The best way to make your giveaway a success is to make sure it reaches as many people as possible. To achieve that, promote your giveaway, use relevant hashtags, and get help from influencers.

Q8. Are giveaways illegal?

A. No, at least not social media giveaways. These are quite common across social media platforms and are completely legal.

Q9. Does anyone actually win Instagram giveaways?

A. Yes. In fact, most businesses or influencers use random winner selection tools live to show how transparent they are.

Q10. How can I increase my chances of winning a giveaway?

A. That completely depends on the rules of the giveaway. Some giveaways allow multiple entries for people who perform certain actions. In such cases, you can increase your entries to improve your chances of winning.

Ready to Boost Your Reach With Social Media Giveaways?

Social media giveaways can help you grow your brand rapidly. They can boost your brand awareness, engagement, and sales.

To run a successful social media giveaway, you need to pick a reward that motivates people to take part in your contest.

Additionally, you need to invest time into promoting your giveaway to maximize participation. If executed well, a social media giveaway can create a lot of buzz for any brand.

You can leverage tools like VYPER and Rafflecopter to ensure that you can run your giveaways and contests smoothly.

Have you run a social media giveaway before? Tell us about your experience in the comments section.

Disclosure: This content has a few affiliate links, which means if you click on them, I will get a commission (without any extra cost to you).