Getting followers to visit your social media profiles takes a lot of hard work. It also takes a lot of time. Yet social media is not something that website owners and companies can not pay attention to.
Creating a relationship with your followers can be difficult. If your updates about your business or pictures from your office are not cutting it, you may want to consider another route. One proven method is to give prizes away to those who follow and interact with you.
Let us look at some key factors you need to consider when running a giveaway on one of your social media profiles.
Redirect the Attention to Your Website
Pointing visitors to your social media profiles is good and you should encourage as many people as possible to follow you. You should also try and traffic to your website. Paying for higher placements on search results will generate additional sales through increased traffic. With social media marketing, the aim is to build a relationship with readers and push traffic to your website. That is why the giveaway should not be held entirely on your Facebook or Twitter page.
Instead, notify followers of the giveaway through your social media profiles and then give them a link to the competition page on your website. This allows you to easily add a lot of new subscribers to your newsletter too.
What Should I Give Away?
That question really depends on how much you are willing to spend and how you feel about increasing your company’s reputation.
People love novelty items. Companies like giving novelty items away since they are inexpensive and can pick out multiple winners. Things such as T-shirts, hats, pens, customized coffee mugs and mouse mats are inexpensive. However, people also use these items every day. This allows you to promote your brand long after the competition has ended.
There are many great online companies online that make giving away inexpensive items simple. One good example is Spreadshirt. The service allows you to upload your brand logo or design to a wide variety of items. You can then send the items on to the competition winners.
Another great item for a giveaway is a gift certificate for one of your products or services. This is a small expense to your company and it allows the winner to choose something they want. They might even spend a little extra money with your company if the product they want is more expensive.
A less used option that can prove to be worthwhile is to offer the winner the choice of a charity your company will donate a cash prize to. After you pick the name of the winner, let them choose and then broadcast it to the world on social media. This generates a lot of goodwill for your business and the winner gets an ego boost too.
What are the Best Ways to Draw Interest?
Major companies have found that viral marketing is one of the best ways of capitalising from a giveaway. Ikea, for example, had a great competition in which they uploaded photos of their products. The first people to tag themselves or a friend on each item automatically won it. It was a great way for people to stay on Ikea’s page and refresh every few minutes waiting for the next image. It was so unique and well thought out that it drove their social media and website viewings through the roof.
There are lots of great ways that haven not been thought of yet to make your giveaway a viral sensation. It just takes a bit of creativity and solid execution and you will see online viewership numbers increase tremendously.
Good luck,
John