The Scoop On Giveaways
In this week’s podcast on 'Build Your Own Digital Community' Episode 14, Kristina talks about social media giveaways. She dives into when they are beneficial, when they are less than beneficial, and how to maximize them. Kristina chose to discuss this topic as she believes that giveaways are starting to become a trend, and that audiences tend to love them.
Hone in on High Quality Leads
Kristina starts off by saying that giveaways do, in fact, work, but only when you are very direct with your goal and mission. If you’re trying to grow your customer/client base, and want to target the right people, a little bit of intention can go a long way. Kristina shares her own experience and refers to when she started The Social Snippet with Maria. They were hesitant to start their own Instagram page, but decided to go ahead with it in the end. At one point, they were in a stage where they were wondering if it was okay for a social media agency to have only 100 followers on their social media accounts. Kristina talks about how she started a giveaway with a friend in order to grab more attention, and managed to gain 700 additional followers.
Although the giveaway helped to gain more followers, it was not a huge success in the end. People ended up unfollowing their account afterwards, including the person who won the giveaway. From this experience, Kristina states that giveaways do work, but if she were to do it again, she would do it differently. Giveaways have a tendency to succeed when they are exceptionally targeted. Being less focused on trying to gain followers and being more focused on high quality leads is extremely important. You want to be giving away something that is high value and helpful to your ideal client. That way, they are excited to participate. Kristina adds that from her personal experience, people seem to value products and physical items over services. She also suggests boosting giveaways. On Instagram, you have the power to boost the giveaway to a particular niche, however it is important to keep in mind that boosting a giveaway can also bring in random people or bots.
Collaborate with Like-Minded Creators
Kristina mentions how the most successful giveaways she’s ever seen were collaborative. It is hard to do a successful giveaway by yourself as you have to really lean in on your followers even if your sphere of influence isn’t super high. This is why it is better to do a giveaway with someone who also wants to grow their social media presence and who has similar goals to yourself. For example, an AirBnB company partnered up with a travel influencer for a giveaway, and it resulted in them getting more bookings from the participants. Kristina emphasizes that if you are collaborating with someone who is not an influencer, you should try working with someone who has more followers than you or has a very engaged audience.
Consistent Engagement is Key
Kristina’s next point is that continual engagement is key. Only showing up to the audience during the giveaway is not ideal. You want to always be engaged because you are constantly building your community and your clients through this process. Kristina adds that there are many helpful additions that can be made to giveaways. For example, you can have participants tag a friend or follow the account, and then go even further by adding elements such as “bonus entry if you join my email list” or “bonus entry if you join my text list”. These methods tend to attract the most people. When you’re hosting giveaways, you want to provide ways for people to continue choosing you. Your sequence should be of very high value so that your audience does not unfollow you or unsubscribe later on.
Avoid Facebook or Instagram Affiliation
The last thing to ensure is that your giveaway is not affiliated with Facebook or Instagram in any way. It is possible that your account can be reported and potentially suspended or banned, which then results in you losing your followers and losing your audience.