Giveaways on social media can be a fun way to quickly grow your audience and add a bit of buzz around your products. There are a handful of things that tend to occur around social media giveaways that are hard to avoid but important to be aware of when designing your own giveaway.
Disappointment: When the item you are giving away is so awesome (and obviously wanted) you can create a level of disappointment when doing a giveaway…especially when thousands of people liking and following your giveaway directions and thinking they have a chance to win.
Tip: Don’t make a big deal about the winner because every other fan or follower who participated but didn’t win essentially lost. Be sensitive to the disappointment you’re creating.
Fairness: Sometimes giveaways are not fair and unfortunately for some giveaways it’s apparent. Don’t say you will randomly select a winner if that’s not what you are doing. Be transparent on how you are going to make the contest fair and how you choose the winner.
Tip: Be transparent about how you are choosing the winner
Long Directions: It seems like giveaways have longer and longer things required of you in order to participate. If it takes more than one or two things to enter (for example, like and comment) then you are going to lose some people from participating who don’t want to jump through your hoops.
Tip: Keep it short and simple when it comes to directions. Picture yourself as the fan who wants to win, would you want to follow your own list of giveaway directions to participate?
Free Marketing vs. Spam: Oftentimes the directions to enter to win the giveaway require fans to repost a photo or bit of marketing that promotes the account doing the giveaway. It honestly looks spammy and can be annoying to followers who are also trying to curate their own accounts.
Tip: Don’t require people to repost your image in order to participate.
Loop Giveaways: These types of giveaways are when a group of small businesses or people pool together a great giveaway package and say that followers must like and follow all of the accounts participating in the loop giveaway. Then you have an opportunity to win all of the prizes.
There are two challenges with loops.
- People have caught on to this scheme and no longer want to participate.
- Sometimes the accounts participating in the loop don’t hold their end of the bargain meaning the giveaway fails, looks disorganized, or doesn’t produce the followers or engagement desired.
Tip: Look towards other models of giveaways other than loops. See what other accounts do that are successful.
Authentic Followers: When you ask someone to participate in a giveaway you are attracting audiences who want the free thing or want the item. If they had already liked what you did they would already be followers. Essentially you may not be attracting true followers.
Tip: Do not be surprised if you see your followers drop after the giveaway because they liked and followed for the free item and unfollowed after. It’s the reality of a giveaway.
