Running a giveaway on social media may sound like an easy way to gain more followers and increase your reach, but it’s important you’re doing it for the right reasons. You need to plan it out, and ensure that you’re complying with the platform’s terms of use (not to do so could have serious implications for your account!).
Disclaimer: Please note the information contained in this blog is correct as at 24th November 2023. You should always check the up to date Terms of Use for all social media platforms to ensure you comply.
Reasons to Run a Giveaway on Social Media
There are many reasons to run a giveaway on Social Media; they can help your business:
- Promote a new offering
- Create a buzz around your offering and business
- Increase your reach
- Reach new people
- Increase your followers
- Raise brand awareness
- Reward the loyalty of your current audience & customers
Before you run a giveaway it is important to first decide what you’re hoping to achieve from it. This will help you to design the right kind of giveaway (and where to run it) and also to measure the success of it.
For example if you want to increase followers then a condition of the giveaway should be to follow your account, and you should take a note of how many followers you have before launching the giveaway and how many you have afterward. You may also want to look again at your number of followers 2-4 weeks later as well – some people are serial ‘competition enterers’ and will unfollow after the giveaway has closed.
If however you want to create a buzz around your current range of offerings, a condition of your giveaway may be for followers to comment with their most loved / most wanted offering from your range. This also provides interesting information about what your current audience are interested in and you can use this when developing future offerings and promotions.
How to Run a Giveaway
When you run a giveaway it is important that you comply with the terms of use for the platform you’re running it on. Depending on your reasons for running the giveaway, and what the different platforms allow you to do, may influence your decision over which platform(s) to run the giveaway on.
Remember when you signed up for your account (on any platform) you agreed to these terms, so failure to comply with them could lead to serious implications for your account; at worst it can be closed down.
When running any giveaway (whether on social media or not) it is important to ensure fairness. For a giveaway on social media, it is vital to know how you will track entries & draw a winner.
Also bear in mind that (as with all content you share on social media) you must comply with the UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising and Direct & Promotional Marketing (‘CAP Code’) when running prize promotions. The CAP Code generally requires advertising to be legal, decent, honest and truthful.
When planning your giveaway it is also important to consider any ‘terms’ around the giveaway. For example: are you a local offering so do people need to be able to travel to you? Does the prize include postage? Where can it be shipping (in the UK or worldwide)? Is there a date / time restriction on the prize?
Also remember to plan how long the giveaway will run for and how you’ll be tracking entries.
All this information should be included in the caption for your giveaway.
Running a Giveaway on Facebook
Within Facebook Terms of Services they state “Your promotion must not require or incentivise participants to share, repost, tag others or in any other way publicise your promotion.”
This means you can’t ask people to share or tag others as a condition of entry on Facebook. You may ask people to do this as an optional as could argue that it you are not requiring or incentivising them to do so; this is a bit of a grey area so proceed with caution.
Facebook also require you to “(a) fully release and hold Meta harmless from liability, and (b) acknowledge that the promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed, administered by or associated with Meta.”
Running a Giveaway on Instagram
Instagram have similar rules to Facebook; particularly around the protection of Meta from any association with the competition.
Within Instagram Terms of Use, they state “you must not inaccurately tag content or encourage users to inaccurately tag content (example: don’t encourage people to tag themselves in photos if they aren’t in the photo).”
They do not restrict tagging or sharing of the competition.
However a word of caution, if asking people to share your post as a requirement for entry consider how you will track this? If people have a private account you may not be able to see their Stories so cannot confirm if they have shared it. Additionally stories are only shown for 24 hours so you can not go back to check if the post was shared.
To add to this many people ask for the post to be saved as a condition of entry; this is not fair. Through Instagram insights you can not see who has saved your post so there is no way to verify someone’s entry.
WARNING: If you have your account set up to automatically share your Instagram posts to your Facebook page beware! Due to the different rules around giveaways what is allowed on Instagram may not be allowed on Facebook so turn off this setting for this post!
Even if the post complies with the Facebook terms of use, it means you have 2 posts to track entries across which could get confusing!
If you want to promote the giveaway on Facebook, consider sharing a post encouraging your audience to head to your Instagram profile instead!
What About the Others Platforms?
X (Twitter)
X have some clear rules for running ‘Promotions on X’ within their Rules of Use. They do allow competitions and the rules in place are around ensuring fairness and reducing spam.
TikTok
There are no specific rules around running competitions or giveaways in their Terms of Service. So this suggests you are free to run giveaways there but always ensure fairness and transparency.
Tips for Running a Giveaway on Social Media
Hopefully the above has been useful for planning your giveaway on Social Media, here are some final tips to remember:
- Set a clear goal for running your giveaway and plan the entry requirements to help achieve this aim
- Be clear about what you are giving away and what is (and is not) included
- Ensure you have clear entry requirements
- Make sure these comply with the Platform(s) Terms of Use
- Ensure you know how you will track entries. (Don’t ask people to SAVE your post and make sure you know how to track if asking them to SHARE it)
- Plan how you will pick a winner (there a range of apps / website that can help with this)
- Acknowledge that the giveaway is in no way affiliated with the platform
- Set clear terms for the giveaway (including dates)
- Consider any follow up after the giveaway has ended. For example you could contact everyone who enters with a special discount (warning: this could be admin heavy if you have a high number of entries!), or run a special offer for a short period.
- Review whether the giveaway has met the goal you first set
If you need further support or advice running your own giveaway on social media, or with any of your social media then do get in touch with Corinne, who provides a range of social media marketing support services.