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How To Do A Successful Giveaway – 10 Tips
We all know giveaways can be fun, they help you get loads of followers, subscribers and engagement. It’s a great way to get a conversation going about your brand without being “too promotional”. It is unbelievable how much traffic comes to your page from people who don’t actually click the follow button, so when you encourage them to follow you in exchange for incentives, you can grow your audience very quickly and effectively. However, if the giveaway is not done correctly it can be very stressful. When doing my first giveaway, there was a lot of things that I wish I knew beforehand, which is why I’ve put together these tips and tricks following my experience. It was fun, exciting and very rewarding, but most of all it was a learning experience. I will be sharing with you, what worked for me, and finally what I wish I knew.
1. Set a Goal
Ask yourself what you want to achieve. This is very important as it will provide the foundation to your giveaway. Do you want to increase traffic to your website? Do you want more Instagram followers? Do you want to create leads for your business? These questions are very important as they will allow you to decide the rules and rewards for your giveaway.
2. Don’t have too many action points!
I honestly can’t stress this point enough. This is why it’s so important to set your objective beforehand. After you have established your goal, stick to it. Try to focus on one objective at a time. For example, if you want to build your Instagram, your main action point might be “Ensure you are following me” The fewer action points you have the easier it will be for you to monitor your contestants are following all the rules correctly. If you have too many action points it will be really difficult to monitor if people are following rules across all platforms and just creates heaps of work for you!
3. Make your audience engage with you.
One of your action points should cause your audience to engage with you. Having points like “Tag 3 of your friends” allows the audience to engage, whilst also widening your reach. People who may have not been aware of your brand will now receive a notification and will feel more motivated to participate in your giveaway. This allows you to enhance your brand visibility whilst also getting people to talk about your brand.
4. Make sure your rules are clear and concise.
The last thing you want is your followers not being able to follow the rules correctly due to a mistake on your part. It is crucial to plan the giveaway beforehand. Explore how you will monitor how people will be following the rules, and make sure you know beforehand how you will be picking a winner. A complete description stating the following things is very important:
- How do they enter?
- When will the giveaway end?
- The rules and the criteria.
- The prize
- When and how the winner will be announced
If you have all of these, your description will be much more effective.
5. Make sure all your social media platforms are consistent in regards to your giveaway.
It is very important if you have announced your giveaway on more than one of your social media platforms, that they are consistent with each other when it comes to the rules. The rules for your giveaway should be clear. All action points should be the same, and people should be able to enter from your website in exactly the same way they would if they were entering from your Instagram.
6. Be Transparent. Be Fair.
During your giveaway, it is very important people know exactly how everything works. One of the things that worked extremely well for me was transparency. People appreciated how much information I gave them. I kept them well informed from the start to the end about how I will be monitoring the rules, how I was going to pick a winner and most importantly announcing the winner… LIVE. This allowed them to see how serious I took being just and fair, it got me a lot of positive feedback afterwards too.
7. Make a fun live announcement.
I received a lot of great feedback regarding the live announcement. A lot of people said they really enjoyed watching the spinning wheel pick a winner. It was fun, exciting and allowed people to watch how we chose the winner. It allowed people to engage with us and get involved. The software I used was “The Wheel of Names”. It was very simple and easy to use and our audience loved it.
8. Ensure your prizes reflect your target audience.
Offering a very expensive prize which is unrelated to your target audience will attract freebie hunters who will unfollow you once your giveaway is over. In order to avoid this, you need to offer a prize which is related to your audience and your brand. You should also ensure the reward you are offering is in line with the amount of effort required by the participants. If you simply want people to follow you or like your page, a small prize will be sufficient. However, if you are thinking of getting your participants to upload posts, you might want to pick a prize which is more compelling.
9. Promote your giveaway.
A fancy giveaway is not always sufficient to get good results. You need to make sure your giveaway reaches as many people as possible from your target audience. Create your own hashtag. Tag popular hashtags in your posts, ask popular influencers to help promote your giveaway and encourage them to get involved.
10. Relax and have fun.
It’s normal to make mistakes. Nobody’s perfect. Appreciate the journey without dwelling too much on what went wrong, rather take them as lessons for next time. The best lessons come from your mistakes. Don’t be afraid to admit your mistakes and shortcomings to your followers instead of trying to cover them up. They understand you are human, and they will appreciate the honesty much more.
So, what are your personal experiences? Have you done a giveaway before? Are you looking to do your own giveaway? Please leave me a comment below, I always love and welcome engaging with my followers. Also, if you don’t already, follow me on Instagram and tag me on your giveaway (I would love to take part).
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