You have a product that your customers are excited about and you want to drive word of mouth. So why not start an Instagram giveaway or contest?
Social media giveaways are when an influencer or brand gives their followers something for free in the hopes that these people will drive some action such as; following their account, signing up for an email list, tagging a friend, or sharing a post.
How do businesses benefit from social media giveaways?
Have you ever wondered how influential bloggers, social media influencers, and other people with a HUGE following regularly grow their audience? One effective tactic is by organizing giveaways. Whether you’re looking to increase brand awareness or drive traffic, giveaways and contests are proven methods that both brands and influencers use to grow their engagement and followers.
In this article, I’ve outlined some instructions on how to work with an influencer to host your next social media giveaway.
Get New Followers
Instagram social media giveaways can be a fantastic way to boost your followers when you’re struggling to grow on Instagram. It’s not uncommon for new accounts to get stuck at less than 100 followers — in fact, it’s a problem that many businesses experience during the earliest stages of their Instagram journey.
Drive Sales
Since new potential customers will be visiting your profile during the giveaway, your bio link acts as a call to action. You can use it to entice people to engage with your brand on social media, and click through to your website or special offers and promotions.
Brand Awareness
Social media giveaways have a viral tendency to spread and create awareness. The act of giving away something for free can be a powerful incentive for participation. Whether it be for a product launch, or just to thank your fans and followers, giveaways will spread word of mouth for your business on social media.
Leveraging Node for Social Media Giveaways
If you’re looking to launch a TikTok or Instagram giveaway with influencers, I recommend checking out our platform,Node. We’ve built a robust tool for businesses that lets you find influencers and organize giveaways in little time.
Whether or not you have a Node account, you can use this article as a resource for organizing your next giveaway campaign.
Why do influencers collaborate with brands for giveaways?
When an influencer and a brand partner together, they both benefit. The influencer receives a product they can give away to their followers without having to pay for it, and in most instances are also compensated by the brand with product or cash.
This typically involves a random draw/raffle that’s hosted by the creator and posted on their Instagram or TikTok page.
Meanwhile, the brand gains exposure to a new audience and followers that are genuinely interested in their product (otherwise they wouldn’t enter the giveaway).
Picking the right influencers for your giveaway
Choosing the right influencers for your giveaway is essential in order to get the most out of your campaign. Instead of focusing on audience size, look for influencers that have proven engagement metrics, and some affinity with your product or service.
Engagement > Audience Size
Social media giveaways with influencers are all about forming relationships with new potential customers and followers. Whether the participants win anything or not, the more engaged they are, the more likely they are to become your customer.
It can be difficult to read if an influencer’s audience is engaged or passive, but their engagement rate ([comments + likes]/followers) is a quick measure that you can use.
Look for a relevant niche
Influencers are real people with social media followings, who usually have very niche audiences. You should think about the type of audience and followers you want to drive to your business when considering influencers for a giveaway collaboration.
When someone visits your profile page for the first time, they’re often first exploring whether they would want to do business with you. It’s a great opportunity to begin building trust and earning credibility by providing useful and valuable information.
Targeting influencers in your niche will drive more engagement to your page, and increase your chances of striking a deal. Here’s something a creator recently mentioned to us about their experience partnering with brands for giveaways:
My favorite social media contests have a purpose beyond just gaining more followers or likes. If a company asks me to participate, I’ll do so if there is a benefit in exchange for my time and effort.
Content deliverables for giveaways
Provide deliverables to ensure that your giveaway is presented and executed in a way that considers your objectives as a brand. In addition, If the influencer hasn’t previously created content with your product, you may need to send them a sample as they’ll likely want to create an original photo or video to share your giveaway on social media.
Contest wording and verbiage
Rule number one: be clear for everyone, and just keep it simple. The more complicated you make your terms and rules, the more likely you are to get people calling you out on social media and complicating your work. In the worst case, a giveaway gone bad can jeopardize your credibility or cause you to lose customers.
Giveaway rules & logistics
This is an example of a brief that we used to organize an influencer-hosted giveaway recently on Node.
Here are some general guidelines for setting the rules and conditions for your social media giveaway. Luckily you won’t need to do much of the heavy lifting if an influencer is hosting the giveaway for you on their page.
Entry Requirements
These are examples of rules you can set for people to enter:
- Tag a friend in the comments, like the post and follow the brand (most common)
- Share the post in your feed or stories
- Subscribe to an email list
Duration
Indicate the start date and duration of your giveaway. In some cases, you may want your giveaway to coincide with a special event or promo that you’re running.
How to pick a prize for your giveaway
Choosing the right type of product for your influencer-hosted giveaways can be tricky. Your giveaway will receive fewer shares If the prize isn’t exciting enough. As a general rule of thumb, I recommend that your giveaway prize be at least $50 in value.
The larger the prize, the more entries and shares your giveaway will get. Here’s an example of the terms in a sneaker giveaway that Bodega hosted for Complex.
To celebrate, we linked up with Stadium Goods to give away a pack of sneakers. You can enter by following both Complex Music and Stadium Goods on Instagram, which counts as one entry. Only one entry is valid for the giveaway. One (1) winner will receive the following pack of sneakers (one pair each):
Air Jordan 1 Hi OG TS SP (a.k.a Travis Scott x Jordan 1)
Yeezy Boost 700
Air Jordan 4 Retro
Yeezy Boost 350 V2The giveaway ends Monday, Aug. 12 at 11:59 p.m. ET. You must be 18 or older and live in the United States to participate.
Communicate how the prize is redeemed
If there are any geographic restrictions for participants, you should communicate them to the influencer who’s hosting your giveaway. The last thing you want is an angry giveaway winner writing a bad review or publicly outing you for not receiving their prize.
How to compensate an influencer for hosting your giveaway
If you’re hosting a giveaway with influencers, you should be compensating them with products and/or cash. Influencers should be paid fairly for the time they spend creating the giveaway post, writing a caption, and drawing a winner.
Pricing can totally range depending on the creator’s engagement, audience size, and content quality. As well, they may also have specific pricing packages for partnered giveaways.
Here are some different ways to pay influencers:
- One time cash payment
- Product
- Performance-based payment (less common)
Fun ideas for social media giveaways
Photo Caption Contest
Asking followers to caption a funny or thought-provoking image is an engaging way to get people to interact with your brand.
Top Comment Contest
Another fun way to pick a giveaway winner is by choosing the best comment. For example, coming up with a new product name, or commenting on why they deserve to win the prize. The winner can be based on your own pick or by selecting the top-voted comment.
Social Media Polls
We all love to be heard. One way to drive engagement and also get feedback is by asking participants to vote on something in the comments. This can be a new product, style, or feature that you’re releasing.
Celebrate a New Milestone
Hitting a milestone is an important event for any brand. Whether it be reaching 10,000 followers or 1,000 sales made, there’s no doubt that this is an important time in your business’s life cycle. Hosting a giveaway is the perfect way to celebrate and reward your audience for their support.
