Use Hootsuite for free for 30 days. And, liftoff! Publish your contest on Facebook and watch those entries flood in. Make sure to moderate the contest post and address any questions or confusion that might crop up.

As you approach the contest deadline, make sure you communicate to your followers that time is running out. Are there any rules for picking winners of Facebook contests? Technically, no. Picking a winner totally randomly is the best way to go.

In other words, edit all of your contest posts and add a line stating that the contest is closed. This is a bonus step. Or even their photo, with permission.

Make sure you get the consent of the winner before doing this. Working with influencers, KOLs or other influential people like celebrities, if you have that kind of access and budget is an awesome way to promote your contest.

Instead of simply asking followers to like or comment on a post to enter your contest, consider making the entry process a little more challenging and, as a result, more fun. Fashion e-commerce company Myntra used a simple video graphic for their giveaway—participants had to guess how many wireless headphones appeared in a video in order to enter.

You might not think of a Facebook contest as a good source of brand feedback or inspiration, but it absolutely can be. Take this post from a San Francisco pizzeria:. The company is seeking out a new name for a product and taking to Facebook to ask for suggestions. This is a great way to get your community involved in your business and to create a meaningful connection with your followers.

Note: many, many businesses ignore these rules. Still, those are the rules, and not sticking to them puts you—and your social account—at risk.

Not only does this mean you can pick a prize that your followers truly want, but it also creates positive relationships with other folks in your industry. Instead, this giveaway is a partnership with a cat food brand. Common milestone examples are gaining a certain amount of followers or the anniversary of founding your business.

Professional soccer player Katriina Talaslahti hosted a giveaway to celebrate hitting 20 thousand followers. Making your contest relate to a timely event helps to communicate urgency.

You want people to enter now, while they can, and tying your campaign to something that is temporary is an effective strategy. Manage your Facebook presence alongside your other social media channels using Hootsuite. From a single dashboard, you can schedule posts, share video, engage your audience, and measure the impact of your efforts.

Try it free today. Get Started. Grow your Facebook presence faster with Hootsuite. Schedule all your social posts and track their performance in one dashboard. Alyssa Hirose is a magazine editor, playwright, comedian and comic artist based in Vancouver, B.

She attributes her great sense of humour to 9 years of braces and good ol' elementary school bullying unrelated, unfortunately. This complete guide will help you get started with social media marketing and follow the right best practices from day one. Find out how the Facebook algorithm ranks content in and learn what it takes to get your posts seen on the platform.

This list of Facebook statistics has all the data you need to craft a smart strategy and build reports, presentations, and more. Then when they check the RafflePress database, they can verify entries at a glance.

Users have to share a photo in the comments to enter. Instead, Dobbies could use the Submit an Image option from RafflePress to collect photo submissions on their website.

Then with a few clicks, they can see all submissions right from their website dashboard. Killstar understands this perfectly with their choker giveaway because they encourage users to head to their Instagram profile for more ways to win.

Using the RafflePress contest builder, they could include a 1-click action for users to visit Instagram and other social networks to grow their followers.

And with the Invent Your Own action, they can ask people to leave a comment to improve engagement. Brand partnership giveaways are an effective way to tap into multiple audiences and raise brand awareness.

In this Facebook giveaway example, users have to like both brand pages to enter and tag friends and like the post. As we mentioned earlier, photo contests are highly engaging ways to promote your business. In this example, users have to post a picture of their picnic and tag a friend to enter.

Using a contest builder like RafflePress is the easiest way to create a contest like this. The Submit a Photo action lets people upload their photos with a few clicks. To avoid having to break Facebook policies by tagging a friend, you could use the Viral Refer-a-Friend action, which shares the contest with your social audience.

Allowing people to choose their own giveaway prize is a fantastic way to get them involved and interested. Joe Browns did a great job with this image, clearly showing the different prizes up for grabs.

Using the same image, they could have added poll options for each of the 4 prizes. Then all entrants would need to do to participate is click the appropriate number and submit their entry.

Sparking conversations with your audience is a helpful way for users to discover new ways to use your products. Tala Cooking took this approach with their giveaway of a baking bundle.

Because popular giveaways like this can get hard to manage, Tala Cooking could have used RafflePress to include actions to leave a comment and like their page.

Then, they could manage entries in one place with the RafflePress giveaway dashboard. To enter, users had to like the page and share the post. Since tagging people in comments is a grey area that Facebook is cracking down on, Raging Bull Clothing could have taken a different approach.

Instead, they could use the Grow Your Facebook Page template from RafflePress to build the giveaway quickly. With automatic entry methods designed to boost your page, it could be up and running in minutes. Another way to get more people involved in your contest is to offer participants and their friends a prize.

Similar to a friend referral giveaway , it encourages widespread social sharing. In this giveaway example from The Cotswold Company, they could have maximized participation by using a contest app like RafflePress to create their own entry option for receiving comments.

With the Viral Refer-a-Friend action, they could share the contest with their chosen friend to encourage them to enter. For this Facebook giveaway example, users were asked to like the post, tag a friend in the comments, and share the post to enter. Since we already know that requiring likes and shares is a grey area for Facebook giveaway campaigns, you should probably look for an alternative solution.

You can replicate this type of contest by asking users to visit the post in question. This will mean liking your post is optional. But the chances are that users will like the post out of instinct. To encourage shares of your contest, you can use the RafflePress viral refer-a-friend action without worrying about breaking any Facebook rules and guidelines.

To enter, users have to comment with their favorite Christmas song for the chance to win the free book. Managing tons of comment entries can be time-consuming, so your best bet in replicating this giveaway is to run a book contest with RafflePress.

In this example, WPForms, the best WordPress form builder plugin, used RafflePress to grow their Facebook group with a giveaway. As a result, many of their existing customers chose to join the group for tips, tutorials, support, and special deals. You can check out the full WPForms case study here.

The easiest way to run a Facebook giveaway is with a giveaway app like RafflePress. With RafflePress, you can host your Facebook giveaway from your WordPress website while promoting it on Facebook.

This not only boosts brand awareness on Facebook but also drives tons of traffic to your business website. You can learn more in our Facebook documentation. The easiest way to pick a winner for your Facebook giveaway is to draw one randomly. RafflePress includes a random winner picker to help you do this easily.

We hope these Facebook giveaway examples have given you the confidence to drive targeted traffic to your website and grow your business with successful contests. And if you want to find out why you should NEVER buy Facebook likes , check this out.

Disclosure: Our content is reader-supported. This means if you click on some of our links, then we may earn a commission. We only recommend products that we believe will add value to our readers.

This is so helpful! Thank you for sharing these amazing tips I was looking for the same information. Great tips you have shared. I like to visit you here. Well written and very informative. Much obliged to you for sharing about coupons and offers.

I guess I am confused because in one of your articles you say you cannot encourage people to share a post or tag people, but yet in this article there are examples doing just that.

Hi Kim, thank you for your comment. We're glad you have chosen to leave a comment. Please keep in mind that all comments are moderated according to our privacy policy , and all links are nofollow. Do NOT use keywords in the name field. Let's have a personal and meaningful conversation.

Your Real Name. You Real Email. Features Pricing Our Story Login. Get RafflePress. Introducing RafflePress's new leave-a-review giveaway actions. Boost customer engagement and build trust effortlessly by incentivizing reviews in WordPress.

Written By: Stacey Corrin Stacey Corrin. Stacey has been writing about WordPress and digital marketing for over 10 years and on other topics for much longer. Alongside this, she's fascinated with web design, user experience, and SEO.

See Full Bio. John Turner. John Turner is the co-founder of RafflePress.

All they need to do is share it on social media with a unique link! Like this example:. Incentivised sharing giveaway example. Built with ShortStack's Refer-a-Friend Giveaway template View and Create Your Own.

The final idea for making your giveaway viral is to tap into the world of social media influencers. If you can find a group of micro-influencers who have an audience closely aligned with your target customer, they can significantly increase the reach of your giveaway.

If your promotion is a success it can be both a blessing and a burden. On the one hand, you have lots of new leads. But on the other hand, you have a lot of customer service requests coming in and need to be prepared to handle these with professionalism and speed.

Here are some tips for doing so Make the most of new technology such as Chatbots to automate some of the customer service process. This may be hard to do if this is the first time you are running a giveaway, but over time you will become familiar with the types of questions asked at every stage of the campaign.

By automating low-risk parts of your customer service interactions you create space for your team to handle the more important requests.

Make an effort to connect with your giveaway participants using Live Chat on your website and contest landing page. Live Chat not only provides a quick and easy way for potential customers to ask questions, but it also helps you engage with users and improve your conversion rates.

Live Video is a great way to create a personal connection with your audience without physically meeting them. Ok, now to the fun part - the prizes! Your prize needs to have a high perceived value. It needs to excite your prospects, and persuade them to engage with your contest.

If you sell clothes, then this is an obvious one. Clothing giveaway example. Built with ShortStack's Giveaway template. You may even give away a gift card for another business, like Amazon for example. Bundle a few high-value items together!

Just make sure the bundle components complement each other, like this Halloween movie-deal example:. There is no better way to ensure that giveaway participants have an interest in your product or service than to offer it as a prize. KitchenAid followed this simple formula below:.

One way to increase the chance of a participant liking your prize is to give them a choice. Pick a prize giveaway example. Built with ShortStack's Pick Your Prize template View and Create Your Own.

This giveaway prize idea is especially good if you run a service business. Instead of giving away a physical product, you could offer a free trial or bundle a package of the service you offer.

Anatomy did this with personal training sessions:. Food and hampers have been given away as prizes in raffles or sweepstakes for as long as any of us can remember, so why not now? Well, it depends on your business, but for this office catering company, it made perfect sense!

For event companies or entertainment venues, giving away tickets is the perfect prize that complements your business offering. But if you are in the travel industry like Topdeck, Busabout, and Etihad Airways, then they make perfect sense:.

Annual events are a topical reason to run a promotional giveaway and engage your audience. If you are running a giveaway for a specific event, then make sure you tailor the prize to align with the event! The final promotional giveaway idea on the list is to offer a prize that gives participants exposure.

This tactic is very common with photo contests when you have a big social following. Or, when you produce a collated output at the end of the giveaway which provides people with additional exposure. See the example below from a pet company that featured photo contest participants in a yearly calendar:.

Promotional giveaways are a great way to engage with your prospective customers, generate leads, and nurture those leads into paying customers. We hope these 30 promotional giveaway ideas will give you a leg up on your competition! Get Started Today. Will Blunt is the founder of Sidekick Digital by Will Blunt - B2B Marketing Expert - Sidekick Digital , a publishing business that launches, manages, and grows brands with content marketing.

In an effort to improve security and the over-all experience of email recipients, Gmail and Yahoo have implemented new requirements for bulk senders. Learn what they are and how to stay in compliance with this quick read.

Learn how you can use query string parameters in your next entry form to collect better data and engage users. Uncover the secrets to viral giveaways with 17 comment-to-win contest ideas. Elevate your brand effortlessly and attract a flood of new leads and followers. Join Fine tune your campaign.

Design an interactive campaign fully tailored to your brand. Engage your traffic. Get leads. Create the perfect interactive content to pull leads in. Streamline your workload.

Handle several contests and analyze their data in one place. Discover expert tips and trends for interactive marketing success. Get quick answers to common questions about Shortstack features.

Explore our seamless connections to amplify your marketing campaigns. Contact Login. Table of Contents. Contest and Landing Page Features.

Delivering Your Giveaway We'll start with the design and delivery of your promotional giveaway. Idea 1 - Make it professional The design of your promotional giveaway needs to be professional and aligned with your brand.

About the author By Will Blunt ・14 min read. Follow us. Recent posts Go back to blog. Everything You Need to Know About Query String Parameters Learn how you can use query string parameters in your next entry form to collect better data and engage users.

Get productivity tips straight to your inbox. First name. Thank you! Something went wrong while submitting the form. Multiply traffic, interactions, and leads.

Pick a template See a demo・2 mins. Based on the answers provided, Sally Hansen then recommended a personalized set of color recommendations that contest participants could interact with and explore further. Those who shared their email addresses with Messenger were entered into a contest to win a set of limited-edition festive red nail polishes.

Another way to get contest entries is to direct people from your social media channels to a contest landing page. This can be done through organic or boosted posts , Or, or even just a regular social media post. Travel brand Expedia used this tactic in its ThrowMeBack Twitter contest which let entrants revisit a vacation from the past after signing up through the landing page.

We threw this family back to their tbt. Social media contests are an excellent way to let your customers or target audience know about your brand , product , or service. Not only that, they can also be used to increase brand awareness and reach new potential customers.

Here are three fun social media contest ideas that you can use to increase brand awareness for your business. Collaborating with another brand or influencer in your industry is a great way to reach a new audience and get people talking about your brand.

For example, you could team up with an influencer to give away one of your products to their followers. Or, you could partner with a relevant brand to double the prize offers of your contest. Local Vancouver restaurant chain Nuba took advantage of this technique when they partnered with yoga studio Jaybird.

Both brands focus on nourishing the body and the mind, so the contest was a perfect fit. A post shared by Nuba Feel Good Lebanese nubatown. Hashtag challenges are a great way to get people involved and engaged with your brand.

All you need is a catchy hashtag and some prize incentives! The contest called on users to share a video of themselves making their mom smile.

In just two weeks, the hashtag received over 5. Platforms like Snapchat now offer branded lenses and AR filters that users can play around with. This provides a great opportunity for brands to get in on the fun and host a contest using these features. Users could use these features in their daily snaps, or unlock a mountain zorbing game where they dodged obstacles while flying down a slippery slope.

Players won free packs of cookies as prizes. This campaign helped Oreo connect with a younger audience and get their attention with something new and exciting. Ready to run your next social media contest?

Use this template to launch your next social media contest and drive more engagement , leads , and sales for your business. Click below to download the free social media contest template.

Are you looking to increase engagement? Drive traffic to your website? Boost brand awareness? Pro tip: Make sure you set S. goals for yourself: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timebound. For example, We hope to gain 1, new followers within 1 week of running this Instagram contest.

Your prize should be relevant to your contest goals and audience. Make sure you give people enough time to enter the contest.

Pro tip: Use Hootsuite to schedule your social media posts in advance. Teaming up with an influencer is a great way to get the word out about your contest.

Make sure to choose an influencer who has a similar target audience to yours. For example, Facebook wants it to be clear your contest is not affiliated with their brand. Instagram requires you to have official rules laid out for each contest.

There are a few ways you can pick winners fairly :. That way, there are no surprises when the contest is over. Hootsuite Analytics can also help you track how much reach and engagement your contest is getting.

Track contest-related shares , hashtags , and more to see how far your contest is shared. Save time and run your next social media contest with Hootsuite. Promote it across all the major networks, engage your followers, and manage user-generated content in one place. Try it free today.

Get Started. Do it better with Hootsuite , the all-in-one social media tool. Stay on top of things, grow, and beat the competition. Hannah Macready is a freelance writer with 12 years of experience in social media and digital marketing. In her spare time, Hannah likes exploring the outdoors with her two dogs, Soup and Salad.

Considering TikTok marketing for your business or organization? Find out how to make the most of this engaging social network. Find out how Instagram analytics tools help you track performance and pin down opportunities for improvement, and review the best options available.

Find out how to use Instagram analytics to track your performance, uncover valuable insights, and improve your Instagram strategy.

Table of Contents. What is a social media contest? Social media contest template. How to run a social media contest.

When you find the winning formula, kick it up a notch with more valuable prizes and mix and match the requirements to maximize engagement. Your strategy for the Instagram giveaway is based on your objective and the types of actions that you ask your target audience to take.

Giveaways generally involve some variation on one of the following types of contests :. The Instagram image or photo you use to announce your giveaway can take many forms. Fortunately, there are a variety of templates available for free that you can customize to meet your needs.

Here are a few resources to find high-quality Instagram giveaway templates you can customize to make them your own:. You can also create your own Instagram giveaway announcement — or an Instagram giveaway template you can use again and again each time you run a giveaway by customizing a few details — using free and low-cost image creation tools like Canva , Crello , Stencil , and many others.

Instagram requires users who are running giveaways on the platform to comply with certain requirements , including using specific verbiage that releases Instagram from any participation in your giveaway or contest. in any way and is not sponsored, endorsed, or administered by Instagram, Inc.

Running a giveaway on Instagram is a great strategy for getting more engagement. You can get even more engagement from Instagrammers by installing our Instagram follow button. Take 5 minutes now to install it, then sit back, and watch your Instagram follower number grow!

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LinkedIn Analytics is a helpful tool for LinkedIn creators to measure their visibility, content reach, and…. Twitter Verified has evolved in recent years. What is your marketing department willing to spend on the contest or giveaway? If you plan on doing these regularly—to keep your followers excited and engaged—ensure you include them in your annual budget.

Once you know the budget, you can distribute it between ads and prize costs. You need to know your audience demographics to determine which platform s to host your giveaway or contest.

How well did your social media contest or giveaway perform? Did you achieve your goal? This analysis can help you improve your future campaigns. Use these seven giveaways for inspiration.

A tried-and-true way to reach more of the right audience is to team up with brands they already follow to co-host a giveaway. Combine your resources to create the ultimate prize bundle. A post shared by Primally Pure Skincare primallypure. Research which products your audience uses outside of your category, and assemble a dream team.

Your followers will flock to a travel giveaway. Tease it with photos from the destination and details about the accommodations. The only thing people love more than free prizes?

Free prizes with an element of surprise. To keep the momentum going, ask the winner to film an unboxing video when they receive their prize. Giveaway is not affiliated with TikTok booktok books book bookclub bookworm giveaway bookish booktoker bookrecommendations indie indiebookstore independantbookstore bookstan shoplocal giveaways duluthmn SlurpeeRun greenscreenvideo HPRadicalReuse.

Reward loyal customers Encourage customers to join your loyalty program so they can get early access to your best deals and new products. To up the ante, give premium freebies to those that enter within a certain timeframe. Thank your followers when you hit a major milestone. We made it to !! fantasy magicalcreatures dnd mimic dicebox artistsoftiktok smallbusiness.

Participants were asked to post a photo of their barbecue setup, tag Yeti and Traeger, and use the hashtag YETIxTraegerBBQ in the caption. The hashtag brought in more than 1, unique social posts which Yeti and Traeger both repurposed on their social channels. A post shared by YETI yeti. Use these creative social media contest ideas to get more engaged followers.

Asking your followers to tag their friends in a post or comment is an easy way to increase your followers with social media contests. All you need to do is create a giveaway post that asks your followers to tag a friend or three friends for a chance to enter.

You can even offer bonus entries for every friend that they tag. Their post had over comments which means almost 1, potential new followers! A post shared by GoMacro gomacro. Skip the chit-chat and go right to the point— ask users to follow your social media page for a chance to win.

Not feeling lucky? This means you need to offer them value beyond the contest itself. A great way to do this is to host reoccurring social media contests. This could be a weekly or monthly draw where you give away a prize at consistent intervals.

To sweeten the deal, you can offer different prizes each time or even bump up the value of the prize as time goes on.

The tourism sector of Newfoundland and Labrador made good use of this tactic in its PlayItByEar campaign, in partnership with Air Canada. The campaign included weekly prize draws for contestants who created songs using local sound bytes.

They also included a grand prize giveaway at the end of the campaign to keep followers engaged throughout. This is the final week of the Play It By Ear Contest. Play for your chance to WIN a great weekly prize, and qualify for our GRAND PRIZE draw of a Day trip for two to Newfoundland and Labrador.

maxximvacations AirCanada pic. Social media contests can help you find more qualified leads and speak to a wider audience. Here are three social media lead contest ideas to get you started.

You can use sign-up contests to gather lead info on your customers. To do this, simply ask contest entrants to sign up in exchange for a deal or offer. This was the strategy the Columbus Blue Jackets hockey team used to boost ticket sales for their Stanley Cup playoff games.

Facebook ads were pushed out to fans, asking them to sign up to win free playoff game tickets. Source: Facebook. If you want your audience to pay attention to your messaging, try reaching out directly to their inbox.

Nail polish brand Sally Hansen used this tactic in its recent Facebook Messenger contest. Users were sent direct messages asking them four questions about their skin tone, undertone, and personal style. Based on the answers provided, Sally Hansen then recommended a personalized set of color recommendations that contest participants could interact with and explore further.

Those who shared their email addresses with Messenger were entered into a contest to win a set of limited-edition festive red nail polishes. Another way to get contest entries is to direct people from your social media channels to a contest landing page. This can be done through organic or boosted posts , Or, or even just a regular social media post.

Travel brand Expedia used this tactic in its ThrowMeBack Twitter contest which let entrants revisit a vacation from the past after signing up through the landing page. We threw this family back to their tbt. Social media contests are an excellent way to let your customers or target audience know about your brand , product , or service.

Not only that, they can also be used to increase brand awareness and reach new potential customers. Here are three fun social media contest ideas that you can use to increase brand awareness for your business.