How to Do Social Media Giveaways? (with Content Ideas)

Brian Denim

Published in How To July 12, 2024 11 min read

With the increasing presence of small and big brands across Social Media Platforms, it becomes important to stay updated with all the social media engagement tactics. Social Media Contests and Giveaways is one such tool that helps you engage your current audience and build new audiences over your Social Network

Are you ready to harness the potential of social media giveaways to elevate your brand status? It’s simple yet effective: reward your audience with a product, discount, experience, or opportunity – absolutely free! By running a social media giveaway, participants engage with your brand, and you get to randomly select a winner from among them. Sure, it may require some investment, but the payoff is priceless.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through the entire process, empowering you to boost brand visibility through strategic giveaways. But that’s not all – stick around until the end for some bonus content ideas to keep your audience engaged and excited.

You must have a certain goal or objective in mind when you try to run a social media contest. You do not want the success of your social media to be a jack of all plan, but a master of one. Define your giveaway’s purpose to ensure it’s focused and effective. Whether it’s a way to increase followers, generate leads, promote a new product, or gather feedback, pinpoint your objective to shape your campaign rules and messaging. Based on this, you will engage your social media management skills.

Before running a giveaway, try to understand where your social media followers are most active. For instance, if you are targeting Gen Z and Millenials, Instagram and Tiktok are your best bet but for boomers, Facebook should be your Go-to option. Young Moms and Females are more active on Pinterest for a contest or giveaway.

You must choose the right social media by understanding your target group well. Who are the maximum users of your product? Or which market segment has shown the most interest in your services? Giveaways can help when you tailor it as per the Social Media Content of a specific platform.

3) Define a Practical Budget for the Contest to Run

Contests are a great way to boost Social Media analytics but it is going to cost you. On top of that, to increase social media engagement, you might need to run some ads . For that, you need a budget. Now, there are about 53 million various types of giveaway hosted by Instagram so you do not want to get lost in the crowd but stand out. The participants will not come for an earring, but would come for an Instagram giveaway of a limited edition Harry Potter Themed Earing.

The prize that you offer must be related to your product/service and not something completely contrasting to your offering. To boost online presence with Giveaways, partner up with some similar brand or an influencer.

should design the rules based on your type of contest. Once your mind is settled on the above points, it’s time to pen down an actual plan.

Define a timeline for your Type of Contest

When would you launch the campaign, how long will the campaign duration be, when will you announce the winners, these timelines must be very clear before the giveaway launch

1. Terms and Conditions to Enter the Contest

You must define the contest guidelines that a user has to go through to participate in the Giveaway. They have to follow you, tag you, provide a one-liner in the comments, tag their friends, whatever that you feel is not too little and not too much. You should design the rules based on your type of contest. When you run social media giveaways, you must clarify the number of winners when you post on social media. This will motivate users to enter the giveaway.

3. Make a Design

Get help from designers and copywriters to generate an attractive social media post. Further, plan a hashtag if you are going for a photo/video contest. Make you giveaway designs and keep them ready before the launch.

Look at your social media calendar and any clashing competitions on social media. Plan whether you would just do one post for the Giveaway or use social media for recurring posts/stories for reminder on different types of social media platforms.

Executing a Winning Giveaway or Contest

Now, it’s time to run a giveaway strategy on the right platform for Social Media Giveaways. Look at the platform analytics to understand the most active time of your audience and post during that time. Make sure you are promoting the giveaway on your Social Media Account. Giveaway is a great tool for engagement which in turn will boost future engagement. You must spread a word about your giveaway and make your giveaway reach maximum people.

If you feel it will be overwhelming to do all of this on your own, take help of social media giveaway tools like ViralKit which will also help you block fake entries. You can get analytics from different social media platforms right here. Voila, you have created an Instagram giveaway and you are seeing all the action and metrics. Stay in touch with your participants to give them updates.

Once your Giveaway period is over, you need to work on further proceedings. You cannot sit back and relax thinking your Giveaway is done. Now comes the major part of the campaign, the processing.

1. Use Giveaway tools to declare Winner of Best Giveaway:

When you promise for a Giveaway, you must announce the Winner/s. You can use free tools like Random Comment Picker to determine a winner. Now, if you have already used some tool to help you with the Giveaway, they would have their winner picking mechanism based on your set rules, so don’t worry.

You must create a separate post for announcing Winners and not just message them personally or post a story. This will work as a digital footprint for your future visitors which will prove your honesty and commitment regarding Giveaways. Tag the winners and ask them to revert their details for receiving the prize.

declare winner on social media platforms

3. Convert Giveaway Participants to Leads:

Do not let go of all other participants. They are your leads and will be a part of your mailing list. Their participation in the Giveaway means they have certain level of interest in what you offer thus, you can launch your referral program to motivate them and convert them as your customers.

Make sure you show the transparency of the Winner Choosing Process to the public so that your process and integrity is not questioned.

1) Launch a Caption Contest

Caption Contests are very popular among Social Media Users. Select a related image or meme or just an enticing text and let the users caption it to win a Giveaway. The art here is to choose a visual that would urge the users to write a caption. For instance,

Review your last read book in one line and get a chance to win an exclusive book. This example entices bookaholics. Herein, you can partner up with some publishing house or an author to give a limited edition or a signed copy of some book.

2) An Online Hunt

If you are running a location specific campaign, then you can ask users to spot a specific design/creative/thing related to your business around the town and post a photo with it. This sparks curiosity among users and will also increase your OOH advertising.

Here, take an example of McDonald’s. They used their logo arcs to depict where the next/nearest McD is located. Now, they can simply put up on their Social Media that ‘spot the hoarding, click a picture, visit the store, and get discounts!’ This brings attention to their OOH advertising as well as increases digital and in-store visitors.

3) Trivia Game

Post an interesting question and label it as ‘The correct answer wins the giveaway’, to increase engagement in the comments and also make it a little challenging.

4) The OG

You can always keep it simple if you are comparatively new to this social media giveaway campaign arena. Just ask them to like, follow you, and share it on their stories or tag three friends. Done, the Giveaway Rules can be as simple as that.

5) Photo-Video Contest

You can ask the participants to post a specific photo or join/create a trend as per the rules. This will increase the User Generated Content and engagement on your page. With a dedicated hashtag, you might just create a viral trend. Coca-Cola’s #ShareACokePNG Selfie Contest is a good example of this with an enticing offer of winning special merchandise.

Tag a Friend who hears you whine about your year on Christmas (the prize can be a Christmas centric product or a home product that can be used in vacation).
Tag someone who would deny to order but eat up your plate (good for restaurants, delivery platforms wherein you can giveaway specific discount, or provide one exclusive dish free on a minimum spend).
Suggest us a creative name for our upcoming XYZ product and get a chance to be the face of it (this will help you with creative names and also give you a model, a perfect win-win).
Get an exclusive coupon code to access our Website or get a flat 50% off site-wide by participating in this Giveaway.

These Pointers would help you initialize your process of creating Social Media Campaigns. Take support from the right people or right tools to help you easily navigate through it. You must keep looking at the Giveaway Contests run by major brands and also small business pages. If you run a membership site, try to entice the newfound leads by offering the bonus content plan. If you do not convert these participants from your Social Media to your own Website or Mailing List, the campaign can’t be called successful.

Keep your social media channels ready for some mad engagement! 😎

FAQs to Host a Giveaway

How do I Start a Giveaway Page

If you want to create a separate page just for giveaway, you need to look at the platform. A separate giveaway page can be run on Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, or even Pinterest based on your offering and TG. Specify in your Bio that this is a dedicated Giveaway page for various products, services, and discounts.

How do You Choose a Winner for Giveaway

Take help of random winner picker tools available free on Google if the entries are numerous. But if it is a video/photo/comment contest giveaway, the numbers might be less and you will have to check the quality of the content. For that define an unbiased panel from your team or you yourself can pick the best option.

Is it a good idea to do a Giveaway

If you want to engage people, gain new followers, and have new leads, Giveaway can be the cheapest and most effective method. Understand how it would work for you and give it a try, you would not regret it.

In a Giveaway, everyone’s entry will be similar as they will follow the rules like like, comment, tag, and share. However, a Contest is a well defined competition of giving an answer, posting a specific comment as per the criteria, posting a photo/video, or doing some task. In a contest, the entries are bound to be different as the quality & effort of each will be different. This helps in getting User Generated Content (UGC) as well as brand awareness.

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Brian Denim

Meet Brian, a WordPress expert with a decade of experience in web development and a passion for technical writing, watching movies, and camping.

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How to Do Social Media Giveaways? (with Content Ideas)

3) Define a Practical Budget for the Contest to Run

Define a timeline for your Type of Contest