Want to do a social media giveaway but don’t know where to start? This article is a one stop shop for everything you need to know to get your first social media giveaway off the ground. Of course, everyone loves a freebie but in order to make the most out of your giveaway, you need a detailed strategy in place.
Need a way to increase followers and up your engagement, well a social giveaway might be just the way to do that. The Instagram profiles that host giveaways grow their followers 70% faster according to research conducted by Tailwind.
Establish Your Goals
The first objective you want to iron out is what is the goal of this giveaway.
- Do you want to increase your follower account?
- Is your goal to increase social engagement?
- Do you want to boost your brand awareness?
While more than one of these can be accomplished at once when doing a social media giveaway, it is important to narrow down a primary focus.
Entry to Giveaway
Next, you need to decide what kind of giveaway you want to run. Some popular of the types of giveaways include:
- Comment to win
- Tag to win
- Post a picture to win
- Follow to win
Which style you decide to go with should align with the objectives you have for the giveaway. Here are some examples:
- If your goal is to increase engagement you might want to go with the “comment to win” or “tag to win” options. Both are great to increase those engagement numbers and by requiring a tag, you are incentivizing your followers to involve their friends which also creates more brand visibility.
- One option that does require a little more action from your followers is the “post a picture to win” giveaway. This option is great to get your brand name out to your supporters and followers. This strategy is somewhat similar to influencer marketing.
Prize to Giveaway
The next thing you should determine is what are you going to give away? If your brand produces a product, maybe this is an opportunity to giveaway the signature merchandise that best represents your business. If your brand has more service offerings, then you want to be very strategic with what you decide to promote for your giveaway. If your focus is on a global audience, then maybe you want to giveaway a product you carry at your business or partner with a company’s product that holds the same values as yours. If your objective is to gain more of a regionalized following, then offering a free service would incentivize locals to enter.
Run your Giveaway
Now its time to launch your giveaway! Be sure to make all the rules and regulations extremely clear so followers know what to expect when entering. Creating a posting strategy and establishing what platform you want this giveaway to live on is essential. Although giveaways obviously draw a lot of attention, the giveaway assets you create should match the excitement.
Some things that you want to keep in mind when going the giveaway route is to not overdo it. While giveaways can be effective and exciting, to maintain those followers and engagement you get from them, your brand needs to keep up with organic and interesting content to keep them. Posting too many giveaways can sometimes turn people away and make your account look less genuine.
If you’re looking for some inspiration, feel free to check out the LenovoEDU, Legion Gaming and LenovoPRO Communities to check out how we promote our hardware giveaways. (links to social or in-geo giveaways in relevant communities.
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So what about you? Have you ever run a social media giveaway? What successes and learning opportunities did you discover? Share in the comments below with the community to get the conversation started!