Many businesses use social media giveaways to spread the word about their products and services. But, if you’re new to social media, you might not know how to do this. Here are some ideas to get you started.
Determine What Your Goal Is
What do you want to accomplish with your contest? Do you want more sales? More engagement on social media? Do you want more links?
Once you’ve figured out what you want to do with your giveaway, it’s time to figure out what you will give away.
What Will You Give Away?
One of the best giveaways is branded or custom playing cards. They’re something that easily fits into a standard-sized pocket, and prospects will remember your company.
Another great gift is a pen or notepad. Why? People use these items every day. When they reach for them, wouldn’t you rather they be using your branded items?
Some companies use their own products and services as giveaways. For example, a remodeling company might give away a free door, or replacement windows, or siding. These make excellent giveaways for obvious reasons and they also clue you in as to who your real leads are. Anyone who enters the contest needs these things. Otherwise, they wouldn’t enter.
Use a 3rd Party Service To Manage The Giveaway
Sure, you could try to host and manage the giveaway yourself, but there’s a lot that can go wrong, so it’s usually better to have a 3rd party company manage it. Rafflecopter is a good company. It’s easy to set up a promotion through the company’s website, and it’s very inexpensive. It can also be integrated into your company’s Facebook, Twitter, and other social media accounts.
Establish Benchmarks For Your Giveaways
Before you launch your promotion, make an internal company document that contains benchmarks for progress. Consider the number of “likes” on Facebook, the number of “+1s” on Google, the number of Retweets from Twitter, the number of inbound links from the promotion, the number of visitors and the CRT and conversion rate.
Reach Out To Bloggers
Reach out to any bloggers you know. See if they will promote your giveaway. This is one of the best ways to kickstart your promotional campaign. If you don’t know any bloggers, or you don’t have that kind of relationship with them, it’s going to be pretty difficult. You will probably have to buy advertising.
Make Good On Your Giveaway
This is the last, and possibly the most important, step. Make sure you follow through on your giveaway. If you want to learn how to do this in the most efficient and effective manner, study the successful startups on Kickstarter.
Companies that host their fundraising campaign on Kickstarter use giveaways to entice users to fund their campaign. But, these companies also need to manage that giveaway process so that users get what they’re expecting.
If you fail to follow through, you’ll instantly lose the trust of your community and, worse, you may cause that bad message to spread, ruining your business reputation in every market you try to enter into in the future.
Loretta Milliner has many years experience working in a senior marketing role. She is pleased to share her experiences and insights with an online audience. You can find previous posts written by her on a number of different websites.
