A giveaway is a great way to launch a new brand or business on Facebook, increase your following, or boost your engagement.
Depending on your industry and the criteria you set for your giveaway, hosting a giveaway on your page or profile can increase your visibility and lead to more followers or more interactions with your post.
With that said though, how do you host a giveaway and what do you need to prepare in order to maximise its effectiveness?
Preparing for Your Giveaway
The first and most important thing to consider in preparation for your giveaway, is your end goal.
What do you want to achieve with your giveaway? Do you want to increase your following and therefore the number of eyes on each post that you share, or do you want to collect contact information from followers? Other goals include encouraging engagement with a specific post, collecting opinions from your followers and captive audience members, and driving traffic to your site.
Having an end goal in mind will help to frame the kind of giveaway you are hosting. It will enable you to decide what followers have to do in order to enter and could impact the prize.
For example, if you want to boost engagement then entering could be responding to the post with an emoji. If you want to increase your following, then entering could require followers to tag a friend in the post. To collect data, entering would need to revolve around them filling in a form.
Finally, you need to decide on the prize. A giveaway has to be backed by a prize which is good enough to merit the entry requirements and the time it takes to enter.
NOTE: Many Facebook creators decide to host their giveaway in collaboration with another creator or brand, to maximise its impact and outreach. Look for brands and businesses or content creators who exist in the same industry as you, and whose audience is the same as yours.
How to Launch a Giveaway
Once you’ve set the parameters for your giveaway, you need to decide on the logistics.
When will your giveaway go live, how will you decide on the winner of the giveaway, and how do you propose to market and maximise its reach?
Establishing rules is an important part of this process, with these rules needing to be published along with the giveaway itself.
TOP TIP: If you are a business or creator, you might want to launch your giveaway with a live stream that gives followers a chance to ask questions and interact with you. This will serve to increase the engagement with your giveaway.
When your giveaway is finished and you’ve determined and announced the winner, don’t forget to assess the impact and success of the giveaway! It is only with a thorough assessment that you can determine whether a giveaway is worth hosting again in the future. Happy hosting!
