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Hello friends, just to give you a heads up of where I’m coming from with this. I ran a giveaway blog for a few years, I have a small business that I’ve hosted giveways for, and I love love love entering giveaways I find online.
Hosting a giveaway can be a surprising amount of work, and it’s really defeating to do all the cordidianting, picture taking, and post boosting only to have your giveaway flop by getting only a handful of entries so I thought I might take a minute and share what I’ve learned about how to get the most bang for your buck when hosting a giveaway.
1st – Consider what you are giving away
The broader the appeal the more entries you’ll get. You’ll get less entries if you are giving away a specific item vs. giving people an option to pick their prize, even if its from a small pool (even two different items helps), the broader the choice options the more entrants you’ll get.
Example: If you have a t-shirt design you love and you want to do a giveaway for it, consider:
• Tons of people like t-shirts and clothing
• Not all of those people have your same sense of style or humor
Instead of giving away the t-shirt you love you could:
• Let them choose between a few of your favorite designs
• Let them choose a t-shirt of their choice from the shop of your choice
• Give them a gift card to said shop and let them work it out themselves
• Give them $$$ and let them shop however and wherever they like, while showing off and promoting the item you like. (This is great for reaching a lot of people, but not great if you are partnering with a company)
Bottom line, giving them an option to choose will always get you more entries than predetermining what they will get, even for big prizes. Kitchen Aid mixers are awesome and expensive, but not everyone likes to bake, and those that do might very well already have one. Etc.
I’ve also noticed that just giving away cash, or Amazon gift cards seem to do really well? I have not hosted a cash giveaway myself so I’m less familiar with how that one plays out, but from what I’ve seen they often have such high entries that I don’t find it with my own to time to enter??? Which seems like a good thing for whoever is hosting the giveaway
2 – Tell them what they are entering to win.
This vague “you’ll get a steller prize” business is not enough of a draw to get to me to spend my time competing to enter. If you sell bookmarks and say “Enter to win a bookmark of your choice from my shop” great I’m in. If you don’t tell me what I’m entering to win you could very well be sending me a bookmark, and if I’m not interested in that I’m going to be slightly eye rolly because the giveaway will have felt like a trick, and winning it would be super anti climatic.
3 – Make entering super easy! Like the post, follow you, tag two friends… if you like living life on the edge, have them share the giveaway post in their story.
You want to do more than that? Make it bonus entries, bonus entries can include but are not limited to the following:
Tag more friends for more entries
Share on your feed or in your story (and tag us) for more entries.
Answer this question on the post
Visit the link in our bio and sign up for x,y,z
Follow these other people and comment below when done (you can also the give the vague I’ll check that you are following, comment beside this)
Post a special picture that you took that matches our theme and tag us. Etc.
People are lazy, and if you’re going to ask them to take their own picture to enter, even if it’s for a giveaway they really want, chance are they are not going to do it right that second and they are going to forget about the entry all together by the time they can actually take the picture.
The easier it is to enter, the more success you’ll have.
4 – Keep the giveaway running time frame small, and tell them exactly when it ends and how a winner can expect to be notified.
Personally I don’t think you should run a giveaway longer than a week. If I’m interested I will enter as soon as I see it, I will share it or do whatever I have to do. But if I’m waiting a month to see the fruits of my labor I’m out, it’s just not worth my time to compete, and to wait that long.
As a giveaway host. You’ll get most of your entries in the first two days. After that they trickle in so slowly that its almost a lost cause.
Consider these when you think of how long your giveaway will be accepting entries.
OPTIONAL HELPFUL THINGS:
5 – Reward people for sharing with friends (Not necessary, but gives you a solid visibility boost)
Tag a friend and you and they both win something.
If I love giveaways, I don’t know that I really want to tag all my friends, because if I do they are all going to enter, and lower my chances of winning. But if I get a reward, if some I tag wins then I also win, etc, I’m a lot more likely to go wild.
6 – Partner with an establish account.
The more you can spread the word, the more people that see that this is happening, the more entries you will have. Can you partner with someone with a larger following to help promote your giveaway? Can they share it in their story or on their feed?
When doing this consider your relationship with said influencer. If its a friend that you are close to, chance are you can ask them to share you giveaway pictures in their story, and they might be willing to do it, no big deal.
If you are reaching out to someone with a large following, or someone with a specific feed, make sure you’re giveaway matches what their audience might be looking for, and realize you should, and may be expected compensate them for their time.
They may be willing to do it for a product of their own that they can style and use to promote your giveaway with, or having people follow them as part of entering the giveaway. Depending on a lot of factors realize you might also be expected to pay them for use of their audience and time. Not sure if this is the case? Send them a message and ask.
Grain of salt here too: If you are partnering with more than two accounts that people are expected to follow to enter you are going to lose some people. If the account you are partnering with have huge audiences it might still be worth it, but with each account you add and expect people to follow you will lose a few more.
7 – Take a good picture and add Giveaway text to the image
Lighting matters. Display matters. Do your best, check out some ideas online about how to style and edit photos to really make whatever you’re giving away shine.
If you can add Giveaway into the actual photo, do it. Then when/if people share the image people will know right away its for a giveaway and you’ve got a better chance of tapping into the audience of each person that shares your giveaway image.
Special Note:
Having a local giveaway or “pick up only” is really really really going to kill your numbers.
Do you participate in giveaways? Either giving away things or entering. Comment below with anything that I missing that you’ve found that works or doesn’t work.
very good jon admin. it helped me a lot cute