When you’re running a giveaway using UpViral, asking people to share it on social media increases your number of entries. It’s no secret that social media plays a huge role in the success of your campaign.
In fact, as the contest host, you should be leveraging ways to boost social media engagement. A giveaway doesn’t succeed, let alone garner new leads, without any form of interaction. You have to encourage them. Spark that engagement!
Luckily, there are a ton of engagement strategies that will skyrocket your giveaway success. We’re revealing 5 techniques in this article. But first, we’ll define social media engagement and why it’s so important.
What Is Social Media Engagement?
Social media engagement is the amount of interaction that your content gets. In this context, we’re referring to anything you share about your giveaway. Engagement includes likes, comments, shares, retweets, mentions, and follows.
Keep in mind that every social media platform has its own form of showing engagement. For example, on Facebook, that would be comments, likes, and shares. On Instagram, that would be likes and comments.
A high level of engagement tells you that people like your content and want to see more of it. It shows interest. You can then leverage this high engagement to move them down your lead generation funnel.
The Importance of Social Media Engagement
Why is social media engagement important?
- Posts with higher engagement benefit from a greater reach. That means more chances for your giveaway to be seen by a wider audience who may join your campaign.
- You gain valuable insights and feedback. Interactions on your posts are sources of information that you can use for your business. For example, you will know their thoughts about your prize and their expectations. You’ll be surprised at what you’ll find.
- It makes your brand more human. When you constantly interact with your audience, it shows them that you care and that you’re willing to connect with them - and not just to simply promote your business.
How to Increase Your Giveaway Campaign's Social Media Engagement
Every giveaway is unique which means that your social media engagement strategies may vary. Check out the list below and pick the ones that suit your campaign the best.
1. Know your audience.
The deeper you know your audience, the easier it will be to create content that resonates with them. What language or tone do they use? What keeps them up at night? How do they seek help when trying to solve their problems?
Coming up with giveaway posts will be difficult unless you know who you’re dealing with. 🤷
Another benefit of doing audience research is that you’ll know which social media platforms to include for your giveaway. For example, one of our UpViral users, Eline van Maanen, focuses her giveaway on Facebook. She knows that the majority of her audience is active on Facebook - not Instagram or Twitter.
2. Make it visual.
Visuals have an enormous impact on your social media engagement. Stats show that if content is accompanied by a relevant image, people are likely to remember it three days later.
Leverage the following types of visuals to spark excitement around your giveaway:
- Images
- GIFs
- Memes
- Videos
- Drawings
- Screenshots
Don’t be afraid to get creative and experiment with different visuals. And if you’re sharing the same visual on multiple platforms, be sure to use the right sizes. Otherwise, a platform will randomly crop your visual, making it less appealing.
Here’s an extra tip:
Increase brand recall by using branded templates. Use your brand color palette and style to achieve a consistent look. Check out this example by Saastronautics that did an UpViral giveaway in 2020.
If you visit their Facebook page, you will notice that they use pretty cool templates. 😎
3. Pin your giveaway post on your Facebook or Twitter profile.
Pinning your post is an easy way to draw more attention to your giveaway. Just go to the giveaway post on your timeline, then click the three dots icon to select Pin post or Pin to your profile.
This technique is extremely valuable for encouraging more interaction especially if your audience sees that more and more people are joining the giveaway. It’s also beneficial for lead generation campaigns with longer running times. But don’t ignore it even if you’re doing shorter giveaways.
Take a look at Eline van Maanen’s evergreen giveaway on Facebook. (See the screenshot above). It has been running since 2018 and has garnered over 4.3K reactions, 6K comments, and 864 shares.
Your pinned post should also have a clear call-to-action. Use marketing power words like “win”, “grab”, “submit”, “enter here”, “free”, “rare”, “special”, “VIP” to boost the engagement rate.
4. Use testimonials as a marketing tool.
Are you offering your own product or service as the giveaway prize? Positive testimonials are not only helpful for your website product pages. They can also attract new participants to your giveaway. Nothing captives people like social proof.
Despite reassuring people of your giveaway, they may have doubts about the prize. Testimonials serve as proof that your product or service solves their problems. And if you’re ever doing a sale at the end of the giveaway, those testimonials will have already done their job!
David Fraser’s Facebook page is a great example. He often shares testimonials where customers reveal the reasons why they purchase bunkies. Each testimonial is paired with images of their bunkies.
You can share these types of content throughout your giveaway campaign. As an extra tip, write a call-to-action reminding them to join the giveaway and collect more points.
If you have testimonials for the very product you’re offering as the prize, be sure to share them!
5. Keep reminding your audience about the sale at the end of the giveaway.
Some businesses set a goal of increasing sales through giveaways. They offer their product as the main prize and hold a big sale at the end of the giveaway.
If this is the kind of campaign you’re running, make sure to build anticipation for your sale to keep the engagement up.
It’s the same strategy that David Fraser used in his first UpViral giveaway. He did Facebook live streams where he made people aware that there would be a 2-day sale.
6. Do a live broadcast.
Live streaming is no longer an option in today’s competitive landscape. Live video engages people in ways that other content types cannot. According to Facebook, “The daily watch time for live broadcasts grew 4x over the course of a year.”
Whether you’re trying to boost social media activity on Facebook or Instagram, go live. Here are some social media engagement ideas for your live streams:
“Ask me anything” Q&A sessions.
Give your audience the chance to ask questions about the giveaway. They might have some confusion about the mechanics, accumulating points, etc.
Show ways to use your product.
Educate your audience about the prize you’re giving away. Demonstrate its features, uses in their daily lives, and how it may also help those around them. The old saying, “Show, don’t tell” is the best way to engage people when it comes to educational content.
Tell your brand story.
People want to feel a sense of trust in the giveaway they’re joining. Brand storytelling using live video is one way to boost trust. Share the mission and purpose behind your brand and what you’re trying to accomplish through the giveaway. Make it about them - not you.
Winner announcement and announcement of the next giveaway.
Instead of a regular winner announcement post, why not make it a big deal by going live? This strategy creates more excitement. Not to mention, it creates transparency on the winner selection.
Planning another giveaway? Grab the chance to announce that in the live stream to give them something new to look forward to!
7. Trigger urgency.
If people know that there’s no rush in signing up for and sharing your giveaway, they’re more likely to procrastinate. You can’t blame your audience. Sometimes they just have a lot on their plate!
The key is to create time pressure. Post social media updates (a 60-second video, GIF, or relevant image) letting them know how many days or hours are left before the giveaway ends. ⏰
Using time words in your social media copy or image (with text) can make a huge difference. Examples are final hours, hurry, last chance, close, approaching, and limited time.
8. Respond as quickly as possible.
Fact: Fast response times create good customer experiences. In the same vein, you need to always be ready to reply to comments on your giveaway posts. Be as helpful as you can!
It would be useful to anticipate their questions so that you can provide the best possible responses once they ask. In case you’ll be using giveaways as part of your marketing strategy, categorize their inquiries. Over time, you will notice patterns. Include them in your next live Q&A to save time.
9. Post consistently and at the right time.
Posting your giveaway posts more often keeps your social media page fresh and your audience updated. Aside from being consistent, posting at the right time is equally important.
Taking advantage of “studies on the best times to post” is a good starting point. You can also make informed guesses based on your audience’s typical schedule. For example, their commute times and lunch breaks. The more you know your target audience, the better.
Put your guesses to the test. Analyze your social media engagement based on a few weeks’ worth of data. Check post metrics such as reach, impressions, likes, comments, etc.
Once you have a clear idea of your best posting schedule, stick to it.
10. Bonus: Give Your Sharers Templates to Use
Here’s a lesser-known but highly effective way to boost your giveaway engagement: Give your participants promotional templates!
Not everyone who joins your giveaway has the time or creativity to invite others compellingly.
But with ready-made swipe files (captions and graphic images) that they can simply reuse, they can share your campaign more on social media.
Put These Strategies Into Action
Get the most out of your giveaway by working on your social media engagement. First, know your audience. Then put in the time to create visuals, pin your post, leverage social proof, do live broadcasts, and use urgency. We hope you found these tips useful for your next campaign!
