Giveaways, Gifting & Everything You Need To Know
Here we go again, another day— another Social Ninja Resource comin’ atcha! This time we are covering all things marketing techniques— more specifically Giveaways, tips, tricks & my personal opinion & research. If this is your first rodeo here at High Heels Social Consulting, I highly recommend checking out all the free resources available to you and your business as well our Growth & Engagement Ebook available now on sale!
Let’s hop right into it, why don’t we. I want to start first with some frequently asked questions about Giveaways, how they are run, how they work and the different pros and cons. I totally understand why we all want to increase our own visibility and reach on the platform -- but with such immense competition, it can be a difficult task to accomplish. Studying and learning new ways to grow will ultimately be your biggest leg up in the industry.
What is a Giveaway?
Instagram giveaways are limited-time promotions in which accounts and/or brands promise to give away a product or service to one (or more) lucky winners according to a specified set of criteria. It is set up specifically as a marketing strategy to help the given account or brand with growth and exposure through engagement and new followers.
Should I run my own giveaway?
The best times for a giveaway are when you are looking to accomplish a specific goal with your account. Running your own small giveaway can be a great way to get your audience / followers involved, re-energized and content focused on what you have coming up. One of my favorite ways to boost my website subscribers is through giveaways. It’s one of the best techniques I give my clients when they are launching or re-launching a website or blog. At the end of the day, the whole idea of this marketing strategy is finding new ways to boost interactions within your account.
What do I need to run my own giveaway?
Set a clear goal for the giveaway.
First and foremost, you need to establish why you’re choosing to do this giveaway. Why THIS marketing strategy and what is your ultimate goal for this giveaway? Establishing a clear and set goal is going to help establish what you should keep track of and how to evaluate.
Choose the prize for your giveaway.
The next thing you'll want to do is decide on the product, service, or experience you'll be gifting as your prize. This will vary depending on your goal. If you want to spread awareness around a product launch, for instance, you'll likely want to gift that specific product as your prize. Or, you might want to partner with a brand or fellow blogger or friend and create a unique prize that will appeal to each of your audiences.
Determine the criteria for the giveaway.
Your entry criteria is going to depend on your ultimate goal. For example, if you want to spread brand awareness, you might ask each participant to like your post and comment with the name of a friend -- this allows you to increase your reach quickly, and could result in new followers.
Maybe you want to draw attention to your website, blog or Facebook page. If this is the case, you might ask participants to go to your outside source, blog or web page to find entry-criteria there -- such as a question you then want them to answer in your Instagram comments section or simply just to subscribe to your blog to enter the giveaway. Whichever you choose, understanding your end goal will help establish your criteria.
Determine your timeline.
All giveaways and gifting sweepstakes should have a set & clear timeline. Typically, a good time frame for a giveaway is 2 - 4 days. Long enough to give the giveaway time to spread in awareness but not too long that people are sitting around waiting for results.
You want to make sure your deadline is clear in the caption, (don’t forget to include time and time zones) where your participants know when the giveaway is closing and when they can expect results.
Hashtags
Avoid using any hashtags with the actual word “Giveaway” in them. These are largely blocked by Instagram and tend to do the opposite effect. Instead, stick to hashtags that are related to your niche and your account just like you would any normal post.
Don’t forget your disclosures.
Probably the most important of all, your terms, conditions and disclosures ensure that you are following all of Instagram’s rules.
What to include in Rules for an Instagram Giveaway
Here is the rundown of the Instagram contest rules that you need to adhere to in your promotion:
Acknowledge that your Instagram contest or giveaway is not sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with Instagram
Include the name of the company hosting the Instagram giveaway or contest, if any.
Include the dates the campaign will run, including time zone
Include participation restrictions (such as age and location)
Write clear guidelines on how to enter
Outline how and when the winner(s) will be chosen
Share details about how and when the winner(s) will be announced and how/when winner should claim prize
Disclose details about how the prize will be delivered, including whether the recipient is responsible for delivery (shipping costs) or pick-up
Fairly Picking A Winner
If you are able to transfer all the entry participants one by one or from, let’s say, an excel spreadsheet—you can easily choose a winner by entering entries or copy and pasting all the names into a site like wheelofnames.com. I also like using commentpicker.com or miniwebtool.com for random comment picking directly from an Instagram post. The most important part, is that your winner is chosen fairly and ethically.
Did you know?
Keep in mind that per instagram, you can't inaccurately tag content, or encourage users to inaccurately tag content in your contest (for example, don’t encourage participants to tag themselves in photos if they aren’t actually in them). Pretty simple!
Also, if you are gifting a prize that exceeds $600, in the United States, the sweepstakes winner will need to fill out a tax form. The 1099-MISC form is used to report miscellaneous payments to non-employees. Sweepstakes prizes are treated as regular income by the IRS, and are therefore considered to be miscellaneous payments. The winner is responsible for filing this tax form themselves, but you are required to provide them with the information and the form itself.
Here’s What You Need To Know
Ok, now that we covered the basics for running your own giveaway— let’s cover the big ones. You know the ones, the $800 Paypal gift cards, Target giveaways. You pay into a giveaway and a hosting account takes care of the rest.
I’ve heard they aren’t genuine? What’s Do You think?
I get this questions a lot. Asked as a friend, and as a digital marketing professional and here is my honest opinion. It’s marketing. It’s business. It’s just one marketing strategy among many, and you want to treat it as such. A tool in your marketing marketing toolbox, not the whole toolbox itself.
As with all businesses, there are pros and cons and you want to look at this from all different angles. Here are some things to think about. When making business decisions for your account, one of the biggest things you need to think about is your ROI (Return on Investment) and how it impacts your growth, engagement, reputation, etc and with that there are lots of things to consider.
Keeping the Balance
Eek. This one is a little awkward, but we are going to get it out of the way. We all know those accounts that are seemingly “addicted” to these huge giveaways. They have expendable money (or are offered free sponsor spots) and they gain quickly and by the masses. However, there are much bigger downfalls to doing too many of these— your engagement and your reputation being the main ones.
Listen, I know it can be tempting. You see those big accounts (even friends who shot up quickly in follower count) working with your dream brand and thousands of followers. Here’s the thing though, letting yourself get too caught up in these marketing strategies makes it all but impossible to keep up with follower retention and the engagement rate you should be keeping.
This is where people fall down the slippery slop of now having to buy engagement, (yeah, that’s a thing)— to keep up with the masses of new, empty follows.
My professional advice— one or two giveaways a quarter is plenty. And focus your energy on other growth strategies.
Ok, I participated in a group giveaway— What now?
Here are my go-to pointers that are important to keep in mind after you’ve participated in a large giveaway.
Timeline - Be mindful of when you are choosing to participate in the sweepstakes or giveaway. Choose weeks or weekends where you have time to dedicate to the “Boots-on-the-ground” work that it takes to maintain the goals listed above. Participating or hosting a giveaway is not as simple as “pay it and quit it”— You need the time to dedicate to the strategies I am about to cover. Choose times where you are not strapped to sponsored posts or deadlines of any kind.
Follower Interaction - And I mean this when I say—the way you interact with your new followers is the make or break of your retention and engagement rate when hosting large giveaways. The masses of new followers can be great by vanity metrics, but do absolutely nothing for you if you can’t turn them into engaged & active users for your platform.
One of my favorite things to do is interact with my new friends during the giveaway and as they are coming in (hence why timing is so important— this is time consuming!) but what I have found is, this immediate (or close to immediate) interaction time drastically helped in the overall retention of those who were now following from entering a giveaway. I also saw a big difference in my story views when they were reciprocating the engagement.
AVOIDE the cheesy, copy and pasted messages and please—for the love of the social media Gods— stay far away from automated messages. Why this was ever considered a good tactic is beyond me, but here we are. Automated messages, no matter how “genuine” you think it sounds, just aren’t.
They don’t apply here and they most definitely do NOT apply in any type of social networking. If you’re not a fan of receiving them, what makes you think someone else isn’t? If you do use them and like them—more power to you, but I challenge you to create the relationships the old fashion way and see the difference it makes!
So what to do instead when interacting with your new followers? Short, sweet, genuine messages. Mine typically look something like this —
Did you catch where I spend most of my time? Yup, STORIES! If you own my Growth & Engagement E-Book, then you have a good grasp of the importance, history, and strategies for mastering Stories, and this is no different. Stories make up over 80% of a typical Instagram users time. This is the secret weapon to creating genuine relationships with your new friends.
As the new followers are coming in throughout the giveaway, I will give myself 2 or 3 - 30 min sessions a day (told ya, time consuming) to go through my followers list and send short, sweet, DMs wishing them good luck and sending some love through stories.
Do I focus on feed engagement? Typically no. I’ve done both routes and found that the most genuine connections and best reciprocations comes from DMs. So, sending personal messages & engaging through stories is the real MVP here. I definitely wouldn’t say to avoid feed post engagement all together, just focus your precious time and energy where it will make the most difference!
How do I choose the right accounts and prevent scams and bad results?
Let me start of by saying that I can only speak from personal experience or positive reviews from clients and friends, also—it’s important to remember that participating in gifting, sweepstakes and giveaways is always a gamble. Any legitimate and ethical giveaway will not guarantee follower count. It’s just not something anyone can control. If you see an account guarantee follower count, this is your first flag. Chances are, the only way they can guarantee those results is by using your pay-in cash to purchase fake followers for the hosts. Yes, this is a thing. This is no bueno, not to mention incredibly unethical and wrong.
When evaluating accounts, I typically go by referral only. I will only work with an account that someone I know personally can testify to and has personal experience with. My next step is evaluating the followers on their hosting account (many times, this will require you to request and be accepted to join first). Do they seem legitimate? Are they in my specific niche? Another reg flag is a gifting account with sketchy followers and an unprofessional bio.
Once I have good reviews, have vetted their followers and ensure that all their practices are moral and abide by Instagram rules— I make connections. I will send the Admin a quick DM introducing myself and asking any questions I might have. Response time, professionalism and a knowledgeable account staff can also be a determining factor on my decision to work with them or not.
What gifting & giveaways accounts do you have experience with?
My personal favorite and my bias opinion is SOCIAL MAMAS TRIBE.
Average Hosts - 30-45
Prizes usually range between $250-$800
Average follower gain is 250-500 per giveaway
Prices range between $24-50
Average hosts - 50-60
Prizes typically range between $500-$1,200
Average follower gain count is 300-600
Prices range from $25-$50
Average hosts - 50-60
Prizes typically range between $500-$1,200
Average follower gain count is 300-600
Prices range from $25-$60
Others— (No personal experience, but I see these used often)
What about “Loops”? I won’t spend too much on this but my short and simple is — nah, thanks. It seems like a great idea. These “Mama Loops” and what not are fun on the surface, some are free and under the precedence of “meeting like-minded” niche accounts— however, as a business owner and account manager of my platform, I have keep these things in mind.
Loops essentially require you to follow, sometimes hundreds, of other blogger accounts. They are your classic “Follow for Follow” old school gaining routine. Follow loops consist of a group of participants who post a specified image with a predetermined caption, for the sole purpose of gaining followers. There is normally a set of rules assigned to the loops as well.
Retention rates tend to be much lower (bloggers love to play to “follow/unfollow” game) and then you’re sitting there, following hundreds of other accounts that probably won’t engage with your content as much as a typical Instagram user would. Again, affecting your engagement rate.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure amazing relationships are made in some— but not my idea of smart business ROI.
There you have it, bestie. You know me— I could go on forever, but I am hoping this sets you on the right path and helps jumpstart your Marketing Strategies journey!
Needing a little guidance to get your brand off the ground or help with a slump? Private coaching could be the perfect option for you. Spending some time working with me one-on-one will help elevate your strategies to the next level. Perhaps you are starting from scratch, needing serious help with content planning, blog post ideas, feed aesthetics or figuring out how to collaborate and negotiate with brands. Maybe you are just looking for someone to keep you accountable for your goals and learn the best ways to keep your audience engaged. Whatever is on the dock for you and your business— a solid sales and creative strategy will help you with the long term knowledge + boost you are looking for.Until next time!
Do you have any other questions or points? Drop them below! Let’s keep learning, pushing and being boss babes!