If you make or offer something up special in your line of work, social media giveaways are a fantastic way to get more people to see it. After all, these contests are designed to spread your message — growing your email list, your follower count, or your brand’s name — far and wide, at a cost that can be nearly free.
And while running a social media contest sounds complicated, it’s probably easier than you think. Here’s what you need to do to create a social media giveaway contest to promote your business or products.
As a general rule, social media contests work like this: You offer a prize, and you ask people to take a particular action to be eligible to win it. Of course, it’s a little more complex than this, but it breaks down to a pretty straightforward step-by-step:
Decide exactly what you are giving away
There’s no hard-and-fast rule about what you should offer — just make sure it’s something you can afford to give away for free, and that it’s something you can make look fantastic in contest posts and promotions.
Determine what you’re hoping to get
Why do you want to run a contest? It might be to grow your social following on a particular platform, to get more comments on your blog, or to drive more traffic to your website or your product pages — but starting out, it shouldn’t be more than one thing. Your goal is key because it will tell you what you want to require from participants to enter.
Choose the channel that you’d like to run your contest on
Every social channel has specific rules for using its platform to promote a contest, and you should follow them exactly to ensure you don’t run afoul of the rules. (Here are the rules from Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.) Get the details wrong here and you could find your account shut down, so read carefully.
Outline your plan for picking a winner
Keeping track of entries and choosing the winner can be time-consuming, so set up the way you’ll follow entries and choose a winner. You might opt to use a tool, like Random Result, that tracks and randomly selects for you, or you could choose to gather entries and pick the winner yourself. But decide upfront.
Create a plan to promote your contest
Get the most mileage out of your contest by developing a plan (likely at least a month-long) to get the word out about your giveaway. You should post about it regularly on your social channels — all of them, not just the one where the giveaway is taking place. Highlight the giveaway on your website; email it to your newsletter subscribers, and talk about it with friends wherever you go.
You can also submit your contest to websites that promote contests, such as Online-Sweepstakes.com, Sweetiessweeps.com, and ContestforMoms.com. Each of these sites has its own rules for inclusion, so find the options that are the right fit for you.
Follow up on every entry
Remember that you’re hoping to build a relationship with everyone who enters your contest, so get that relationship off on the right foot. Acknowledge people who take the time to enter, whether it’s a quick thanks in their feeds or an email thank you. Announce your winner across all your channels, and follow up with the winner to find out how much they loved their prize later.
When you do social media giveaways right, you’ll create fun opportunities for your audience, and an opportunity for your business to grow. Everyone wins!
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