A few of our HUB members have been thinking about hosting an Instagram or Facebook competition lately and had many questions so we thought we would share them with you all as there are a few dos and don’ts to consider when organising a social media giveaway. Here is some of our advice to make sure you get the best out of it without breaking the rules.

THE Competition Rules

When you run a competition or giveaway on Facebook you are not allowed to demand that someone shares your post or tags a friend as part of the entry. This would be classed as spam activity and Facebook are likely to remove your competition or suspend your account if they see it. You can however, ask people to like the post to enter or to follow you.

However, you can ask people to tag others and to repost on Instagram which is why many competitions are hosted on this platform, even though Facebook owns Instagram.

Establish Your Objective

While it can be a great idea to host a Facebook competition, you do need to establish what you are going to get out of it before you start planning the finer details. Most want to grow their audience or reach so with this in mind there are some things to consider.

As you cannot ask your Facebook audience to share or tag, the problem you will have is that the only people seeing your competition are your existing followers which means you are not going to meet your objective unless you pay to advertise to reach a wider audience. Instead consider:

Creating A Facebook Competition Landing Page

If you want to grow your audience why not create a simple landing page via your email marketing platform i.e. Mailchimp. To enter they will need to give you their name and email address which then is added to your mailing list. This way your objective is to grow your list instead of your Facebook audience. You could also ask them to complete a survey to enter. As your email list is more important because you have control over it , this is a great way to run a competition. You can find out more about how to grow your email lists in our blog here.

What to giveaway

Your prize needs to relate to your business so your product for example. If you are a service based business, you don’t have to give away your time but perhaps invest in something linked to what you do such as journals, stationery, head phones or a desk lamp. Consider a having runner up prizes too!

Do however think of your audience and what will get them excited!

Create A Graphic & Message

Using a platform such as Canva create a graphic that clearly shows the prize and that it’s a giveaway. The word WIN always helps! When sharing the competition on Instagram make sure you add hashtags such as #Instawin #instacomp #giveaway #competition #content #contestalert #onlinecompetition #competitiontime and #prizes.

Create The Entry Requirements

The best idea is to keep it simple and not ask people to do much to enter. We suggest three things max - so maybe like the post and enter via the form on Facebook. Or follow, like the post and tag a deserving friend on Instagram - always remembering your objectives.

There is a slight workaround on Facebook’s competition no sharing rules - you could, in a friendly way ask someone to share if they’d like (sharing is caring after all) but you have to be clear that this is not an entry requirement.

Write The T’s and C’s

Every competition needs clear T’s and C’s attached in a place that is visible every time you share it. This works best in the first comment as to keep the overall message clearer. Remember to clearly state:

how to enter
what they will win
who is hosting the competition i.e you and not Facebook or Instagram
the dates it starts and ends
how the winner will be informed
any other requirements such as age

Set The End Date

Be clear when the competition ends, but do consider keeping it short as people will get bored of it, plus you will need to continually share it. We suggest 3-5 days max.

What to communicate and when

We suggest a schedule such as this:

Day 1: Launch the competition graphic with the T’s and C’s.

Day 2: Answer everyone who has entered so far on Day 1’s graphic to keep engagement high. Don’t share a new image/post. Add new graphics to Stories.

Day 3: Introduce yourself or your business to all the new followers that you have grown in a new post. Add new graphics to Stories. Keep updating the original graphic and answering comments.

Day 4: Share a “WOW this has been amazing” image/photo referring to the competition. Add new graphics to Stories.

Day 5: Update the original graphic with the winners on. Add new graphics to Stories.

If you are asking them to sign up via Mailchimp then email throughout the 5 days too.

You can see here we are suggesting to not continually share the competition in separate posts - the ideal is that the one post gets all the traction, gets the likes, the re-shares.

How To Choose The Winner

The winner needs to be chosen at random - we suggest a site like Rafflecopter for this.

Finally, we suggest after the competition has run to offer a discount or offer on the product that you were giving away as the demand and want, will be still be high. You may then end up growing your audience and selling more at the same time!

And remember that we can help run your competitions or manage your emails/landing page - simply drop us a line via our Contact Page.

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