How to run the perfect giveaway

Giveaways incentivize your followers and other people on social media to engage with you and be a brand ambassador for you and your content. As a result, giveaways are a great way to strengthen your follower community, generate more awareness for your brand, increase your follower count, and boost engagement from your followers.

So, you want to do a giveaway! Where do you start?

How to design your giveaway

Start with a goal

While giveaways are fun to do, they should ultimately have a purpose, an intended impact. Are you launching a giveaway to grow your follower count? To boost sales on one of your products? To drive more engagement from existing followers? To encourage followers to create more user generated content that you can use for future marketing efforts? Define your goal and work backwards to design the perfect giveaway to achieve your goal. 🥅

Read user comments to get ideas

‍Your follower engagement can make or break your giveaway, so make sure you're designing a giveaway they will love. Read follower comments, check out their profiles, and read their direct messages to get a sense of their biggest challenges and interests to pick the perfect product or service to giveaway. 🗣️

Look at what's trending on Google

‍The aforementioned follower analysis is more qualitative - you can combine it with more data driven analysis through Google Trends. Find out what terms are most highly searched in your target demographic. 📈

Be thoughtful about the prize

‍Ultimately, followers are motivated to engage with the giveaway because of the prize. Make sure the giveaway is something they want - your giveaway prize should complement and be in sync with your brand. 🎁

Set a time frame

‍Giveaways benefit from deadlines. Without a concrete deadline, followers won't feel any urgency to enter. Define a reasonable time frame that gives you enough time to market and gives your followers enough time to take the desired action to enter but also is short enough to present a meaningful sense of urgency. 🕢

How should you market your post?

Add social share buttons

‍Make it easy for your followers and any other viewers to share your giveaway. Add one click buttons they can use to easily share with their followers. 🥳

Use hashtags

‍Find trending hashtags and add them to the comment of your post immediately after posting. For more engagement through these hashtags, comment and like other popular posts under each of the hashtags you include. #️⃣

Create countdown posts

‍Don't just post once about your giveaway - share it many times through your stories, different social media platforms, and through countdown or reminder posts when there are 2 weeks, 1 week, 5 days, 3 days, and/or 1 day left to enter! The large majority of your entrants may come in the last few days or even hours. ⏳

Capitalize on a holiday

‍If possible, ride the tailwinds of a national holiday or event. With a more in theme giveaway, your followers will be in the right mindset to engage more effectively with your giveaway. 🎄

Over communicate

‍Stay in constant communication with your entrants. Your giveaway may last multiple days or even weeks, so it's important to provide transparency especially to early entrants who are waiting to hear the results. Let them know that the giveaway is still ongoing and what they can expect and when. 📢

How to share who won the contest

‍Similarly, in the spirit of transparency, let the world know who won your giveaway. Share a video or photo of them receiving the news and share more about them (if they're comfortable). People are more inclined to engage with your future giveaways if they feel you're running a transparent process. 👯

We can't wait to see your next giveaway! Tag us on Twitter or Instagram if you try any of these giveaway tips ❤️