[INFO THREAD] Running A Successful Giveaway

[bmanfacts]

I recently ran a giveaway on one of my accounts for something and after having some mediocre, but promising results I was curious what has been your most successful giveaway campaign on IG?

What was your target? (more followers, more engagement, link clicks, product downloads, etc.)

What did you have them do?

What did you offer? (Was it niche dependent?)

How long was the giveaway?

Why do you think it was successful?​

I will start with mine to get the ball rolling.

Target: followers & engagement, with a side of product downloads..

I had an intricate system lol​

I setup the giveaway as a points/rewards system.
So the more actions completed, the more chances participants had to win.

1. Follow the main account, 2 side accounts, & a Hashtag.
2. Like & comment on posts
3. Tag 3 friends.

All participants received weighted points against each action
completed with the following bonus actions:

1. Download a free book. (Mega bonus)
2. Leave a review on free book (Big bonus)
3. Turn on post notifications (Large bonus)

The giveaway was a $1000 educational product for 5 people.
The giveaway was a week long.​

I think the giveaway was[n't] successful for several reasons.

1. It was too long. A week didn't provide a sense of urgency, despite having hourly mentions during the week.
2. The ease of participate conflicted with the ease to win. [wasn't appropriate for people who were lazy or who only use IG for entertainment]
3. I purposely only ran it on the main account since the others lacked authority. While the point was to bring some authority to the other accounts, this conflated with results.
4. There were too many subpoints instead of just ONE goal.
5. The prize was too large for people to believe they'd have a real shot at winning it. At least I believe that influenced it.
6. The account running the giveaway didn't have enough authority for it to work. It recently hit 10k a few weeks back so I ran it with that in mind as a reasonable excuse to try this out. But 10k is not 50k-100k. This one is more of an assumption as I haven't run one on an account 50k+ so that'll be valuable to hear from someone who's done that.

On the flip side the giveaway was successful for several reasons:

1. People did in fact participate
2. People completed bonus actions
3. I did see a bump in engagement, although slight.
4. This gave the account an impression of giving back & sharing. A brand building move.

I'm not shy about sharing those things because:

1. They didn't hit THE jackpot
2. They give plenty of insight on what NOT to do, as well as get the imagination rolling for those who are thinking about doing one.
3. Gives all who share an opportunity to collaborate on a giveaway in the future.

Feel free to critique what I've shared and add your own points.
Also feel free to share your giveaway stories.
It'll be very valuable to hear what worked vs what didn't.

 

[SellOnlineee]

Did you use upviral ?

 

[bmanfacts]

Did you use upviral ?

Nope did it solo in a modified collaborative effort. But that's useful to consider what would've helped.

 

[thenickv]

my mother usually does giveaway on her business account(currently 135k followers).

this is how she she usually does it.I remember once they gave away a gopro hero 4 black edition.
So she gathes a group of friends in the same or similar niche, some have more followers than her and some have less.( between 50k and 200k followers)
to be eligible on the giveaway users have to follow every account and comment tagging 2 more users.
all the accounts in her group post about the giveaway the same picture and the rules but the 1 account that it is hosting it and would receive the comments had a tag "official" while the other accounts had to link to the host account and have a tag on the picture "not official".


this method you are pretty much exchanging followers and getting a few fresh people for every account.

now IMO if you are not the host you might get screwed over with this method.
The host would get most of the engagement while the other accounts would actually be penalized by Instagram for posting the same picture which pretty much looks like an ad.
whenever my mother's account isn't the host I notice right away her engagement dropping. she once posted a travel give away which she wasn't the host and the next picture she posted only got 350 likes