Everyone loves it when they get free stuff, it’s even better if they won it. And when those gifts and rewards are from their favourite brands, it’s like a cherry on top. Giveaways and contests help you boost user engagement, awareness, and loyal customers. 

In this blog, we will focus on helping brands launch better giveaways that facilitate a strong connection with customers. 

What are Social Media Giveaways and Contests?

During social events, and giveaways, brands influencers, and creators ask people to complete a task that might include tagging their friends, following an account, using a hashtag, etc. Social Media and lucky winners would get a reward. 

While a contest can be a little different, they are challenges given to people like completing an assigned task such as taking the best photos, coming up with creative captions, etc. This challenges the audience to show their creative side. 

Why Should Brands Host such Giveaways and Contests?

In today’s digital world, short video content is acing it all. And it can get tough for a marketing campaign to engage the audience. This is where giveaways and contests come into the picture. 

They can increase your followers, convert leads into customers, amplify your awareness, and much more. Moreover, they also improve loyalty as you offer prizes to your audience, they are motivated to stay tuned for more in the coming days. 

Giveaway and Contest Ideas

Here are some ideas that you can leverage to host unique, attractive, and engaging contests that will blow away your users’ minds. 

Embed your social feeds on your site

The very thing you can do is embed your social feed on your sites so it will help your daily website visitors and through this, they can directly go to your social feeds. With the help of this, your social engagement will increase. You can embed Facebook feed on your site.

Brand partnership bundle 

A tried-and-tested way to reach a massive audience is to collaborate with another brand and co-host a giveaway. You can combine your resources and reach out to their audience as well. Use a follow-to-win strategy and gain followers. 

Travel to a destination 

What if there are brands that offer you an all-expenses-paid vacation? We all can go crazy over this scheme. Tease your audience with amazing pictures of the destination and share accommodation details. 

Mystery box reward 

People love surprises. Give your giveaways a fun element by keeping a mystery box including some of your products. Ask the winner to film a video, tag the brand, and share it on social media.

Offer gifts to loyal customers 

You can also encourage customers to come together in a loyalty program. People signing up for this program can get early access to offers, premium free stuff, and much more if they sign up within a specified time. 

Host follower-milestone giveaways 

Once you hit a certain milestone in follower count, thank all your audience to keep faith in you and follow you throughout your journey. Appreciate your loyal followers and nurture them for the long haul. 

Allow friends of your users to participate as well 

Host a giveaway where people are required to tag their friends in the comment section, and send these tagged people details about the giveaway personally via DM. These word-of-mouth recommendations work wonders and boost your awareness. 

Give something back 

71% of consumers think it’s important for businesses to boost awareness about a social cause. Use these giveaways to support a cause and donate to people in need. 

Holiday-themed contests 

Holiday themes get people excited for your giveaway. Be it a gingerbread house decoration, finding the best mother’s day photo, or filming the spookiest Halloween prank, your giveaway can be about anything. 

This boosts engagement and get a lot of impressions on your posts. You might see a significant increase in your follower count. 

Award best photos, video, and caption 

You can request your followers to share their most creative piece of content around your product. Anything from a creative caption or a beautiful photo can work. This can come as an opportunity to find amazing content featuring your users. 

Scavenger hunt 

With virtual reality gaining popularity, you can organize scavenger hunts. You can make a list of challenges that the audience has to complete. They can share photos or videos after completion, and people with the best content win. 

Organize quizzes 

People love to test their knowledge even if it does not concern them. You can play a game of trivia or guessing ones. People are keen on winning especially if they get a reward in the end. You can come up with a game related to your brand and hit the engagement jackpot. 

Submit essay, story, poem, etc.

Another way to boost engagement is hosting writing content to find real talent and reward them. You can connect with the winners and maybe ask them to speak at your next event. This is a great way to build relationships and foster loyal customers. 

It’s your turn 

Your most loyal customers will surely participate and most likely win these giveaways. However, the true goal is not social media presence, it is to build personal relationships with your audience. You also reach out to a massive audience, offer customers something to look forward to, and they tend to keep coming back.