5 Tips to Boost Social Media Engagement with Giveaways and Contests

If there are two things in the social media world that people love, they’re contests and freebies.

If it’s free and offers something truly valuable, you can bet that your audience members won’t have a problem disclosing their email addresses or engaging with your brand in hopes of getting picked for the prize. If it’s a contest, on the other hand, then you will need to tend to more in-depth strategizing and organization, but will nonetheless skyrocket your engagement rate.

Both of these marketing methods have the power and potential to raise your brand awareness, improve your CTR, and boost engagement in terms of likes, shares, and comments in the social media world – however, there are certain principles you will need to adhere to if you are to organize a successful promotional event such as this. Let’s take a look at the five effective tips to increase social media engagement with giveaways and contests.

Define the goals of the project

Much like any other project in the business world, a social media contest or giveaway needs to have a detailed list of goals. Defining your goals first and working your way inward will allow you to provide your project with purpose and direction, and adapt your approach for maximum engagement and a positive ROI. After all, achieving different goals will not only require you to emphasize some social media channels over the others, but also to tailor your messages and pick prizes accordingly.

With that in mind, your first order of business is to figure out what you hope to achieve. Some common goals of social media contests include increasing website traffic, building an email list, increasing brand recognition and reputation, growing your social media presence, improving engagement metrics, gathering user feedback, and more. Once you have defined the primary goals of your project, you can move on to market and audience research.

Research your audience

Audience research is one of the pillars of every successful marketing strategy, which a contest in fact, is. Long gone are the days of bland, unimaginative ads and copy devoid of soul or substance, as nowadays the digital audience favors brands that champion personalization, individuality, and an emotional connection with their followers. If you want this project to resonate in the hearts and minds of your audience, you will need to craft content that’s tailor made to appeal to their unique sensibilities.

This means that your contest needs to be relevant and offer something of true value. Firstly, make it relevant by defining your buyer personas and narrowing down the interests of your target demographic. Use these findings to craft a contest that’s relevant and engaging, such as a dog photo contest for dog lovers, a funny home video contest, etc. Once you have discovered what your audience will respond to best, you can brainstorm the prizes.

Make it worth their while

One of the most important and difficult parts of organizing giveaways or contest is choosing the prizes. There can be no room for mistake here, as you need the prizes to be engaging and valuable enough to inspire people to participate and follow the rules of the contest to the end. Remember, it can be pretty easy to get them interested and then lose them the moment they have to share or comment on your posts.

To prevent this, consider a range of prizes that are timeless, functional, and have the ability to spread the word of your brand in the online and offline worlds. This is where physical prizes such as promotional lanyards and other branded merchandise can be very effective, as they are inexpensive to make yet serve a distinct purpose along with having the ability to connect your customers with the brand in a more personal way. Placing branded merchandise in the hands of your customers is a great way to make your company a part of their daily life, so be sure to choose prizes that will provide long-term benefits for your brand as a whole.

Choose the most engaging contest types

Every social media platform has its unique selling point, or angle. Some social networks thrive on visual content such as imagery and video, while others favor blogs and in-depth articles, or even audio content only. With that in mind, it’s important that you know exactly what type of contest will produce the best results according to the social platform’s demographic.

You have a number of options at your disposal, of which video, photo, voting, fan content, comments, and charitable events represent the most engaging and effective content types around. Choose a contest type according to the social network in question, as well as the unique likes of your audience to maximize engagement.

Promote your contest or giveaway

On a final note, keep in mind that you need to spread the word of your contest across the online world. This means that your need to advertise your contest through email marketing, sponsored ads on social media platforms, website announcements, direct messaging, and everywhere in between in order to get the word out and inspire people to participate. This will further improve your engagement KPIs and help advertise your brand as a whole in the online and offline realms.

In closing

Social media has the power to transform your business and ensure its bright future in the competitive industry. Giveaways and contests in particular hold the potential to improve your engagement, click-through rate, and propel your entire brand forward. Use these tips to this and so much more.