10 Rules for Winning Giveaways on Social Networks

Like all giveaways, those on social networks, such as Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube, also have their own conditions of participation. Obviously, on social networks, these giveaways work differently and use the platform to apply their rules. Get ideas for giveaway prizes. But don’t rush, keep in mind; Osortoo is the best unbiased random winner generator. Why are we talking about rules here and what’s with the weird connection of random winner generator with rules here? Let’s unravel the mystery.

Why make giveaways on social networks?

If you are active on social networks, you have probably already come across giveaways by brands or influencers. Indeed, giveaways, also called Contest, are a very good business. By doing collaborations with brands or by themselves, influencers regularly do giveaways because they gain several things from it.

First, it brings them new subscribers, which is the core of their business, it’s a way to get discovered by a new audience and grow. Secondly, it is often on giveaway publications that influencers receive the most engagement. You can carry on live contests to offer giveaways, if you are an influencer. This can promote your account more.
A post’s engagement is the number of interactions users on the social network have with the post on the account, this includes likes, comments, post saves, shares and more.

Of course, when average social network users see publications where they have the chance to win products or services for free with a few clicks, you can imagine that many people participate in giveaways by discovering the offers without having any prior knowledge of the brand or the influencer.

Finally, it’s the same principle for brands, which use giveaways on social networks to grow their digital presence and attract new customers.

Some figures on social networks.

Social networks gather millions of brands that use the platform to sell their products, communicate with their customers and advertise themselves. According sprout social:

1. For example, on Instagram, 90% of users follow a brand. It’s up to you to attract users to follow you rather than your competitors. Nowadays, a good presence on social networks can  give you a huge competitive advantage. So don’t neglect your content and turn users into customers.
   
2. In addition, there are over 200 million business professional accounts on Instagram. That’s why you need to pay attention to your brand’s presence on the web. Your competitors are surely on social media themselves and you can’t afford to let them take market share from you by neglecting your social media.
   
3. Finally, 70% of shoppers check Instagram for their next purchase. Yet another reason for your brand to take social media as a serious business opportunity that can pay off. Your brand’s image on social networks needs to be taken care of as it will influence the purchasing decision of prospects.

How to prepare a giveaway on social networks?

As simple as it sounds, giveaways on social networks require a lot of preparation. You need to find one or more prizes, the date of publication, the date of the draw, the partners, if necessary, the theme (Christmas, Valentine’s Day…), the image of the publication, the description of the publication and especially the rules of participation.

This is where we get to the heart of the matter. As you may have noticed, most of the time online giveaways have several participation rules to get something from the participant in return. There are many rules that you can apply to your giveaway on social networks. We’ve put together a list of the top 10 giveaway rules and explain for each one the purpose they serve, their advantages and disadvantages.

What Are The Top 10 rules of Social Media Giveaways?

1. Participants have to subscribes
2. Collaboration to a Giveaway Partner’s Account
3. Participants have to Like the Post
4. Participants have to comment the post
5. Participants have to mention in the comments
6. #hashtag comments and random winner generator
7. Participants have to save and Bookmark the Post
8. Share the post as a story
9. Multiple comments increases more chances to win
10. Several @mentions give more chance to win

1. Participants Have to Subscribe

This is the most popular and effective rule of giveaways on social networks. It is simply when the participant must be subscribed to the account that publishes the giveaway to be able to enter. This is one of the most basic rules that most giveaways apply. Indeed, it is a very good way to keep in touch with the participants of the giveaway because they will see your publications afterwards which allows you to create brand awareness and to transform them into customers. However, don’t be naïve, since this is one of the rules that requires the least commitment from participants, many of them will unsubscribe from your account following the announcement of the winner(s).

2. Collaboration to a Giveaway Partner’s Account

This is a very effective rule when you have a partner to run your giveaway. Indeed, having a partner in your giveaway can have several advantages.

First, it is a way to offer a product or service of your partner that interests your audience. In case of collaboration, when the giveaway is presented on two different accounts that organize a giveaway together, it is also a way to present your brand to your partner’s subscribers and vice versa.

Secondly, if you have a sponsor, it’s a great way to fund your giveaway with a partner who offers part or all the prizes to your audience for advertising. This way, you gain engagement, offer one or more unique prizes to your audience, reduce your costs, gain subscribers and satisfaction from your audience.

As for the disadvantages, again, this is a rule that requires little effort from users so your real conversion from new subscribers is greatly reduced because many of them will unsubscribe.

3. Participants have to Like the Post

4. Participants have to comment the post

Again, this is one of the most basic rules that most giveaways apply. It consists in asking your audience to leave one or more comments on the publication of your giveaway. As we will see later, this rule has different interesting variations that obtain different results depending on what you are looking for. This rule gives you the opportunity to ask your audience a marketing question. Using a random winner generator actually you are using the system of random comment picker tool. You can pick a deserving candidate with Osortoo. There is reason that computers make our lives easier and so does these applications.

For example, ask them what their favorite product of your brand is. No matter how much you would like to know about what your audience thinks of your products or services, you can ask them to answer this question by commenting on your giveaway post. This can help you get high-value information at a low cost without having to do a full marketing questionnaire campaign.

5. Participants have to mention in the comments

This rule is also popular and very effective. It simply consists in asking participants to comment on your giveaway publication by mentioning, i.e. identifying other users of the social network, one or more people they know. Pick the winner using random comment picker for hassle free giveaways contests.

This rule is very effective to quickly increase your audience and number of participants because the people who will be mentioned by the participants in the comments will receive a notification and probably look at your giveaway which increases your number of potential participants.

However, this rule requires more effort from the participants because they must identify other people in the comments which may displease some people who will not want to participate anymore when they see this rule. Take this detail into account when you decide on the rules of your giveaway to mix this rule with others that will compensate for the best performance.

6. #hashtag comments and random winner generator

Here is a more original rule that has its advantages even if it is not used as much as the previous ones. This means that the participant must comment on the publication of the giveaway by including one or more #. It is up to you to choose which #hashtag you want your participants to comment on. It can be #yourproduct or #yourbrand as you try to make the # that represent you more popular.

Alternatively, you can also turn this rule into a marketing question where participants answer using the hashtag. For example, you can ask “What is your favorite product from our brand? Comment #product1 or #product2 to vote”.
This is a rule that is simple for participants to do so it shouldn’t discourage anyone from participating and allows you to get valuable information about how your customers feel about your products or brand.  Besides you would be using random winner generator to avoid favoritism or human error in finding deserving participant.

7. Participants have to save and Bookmark the Post

This rule is less popular than the previous ones, but it helps to boost the engagement of the giveaway publication. Indeed, publication saves or bookmarks are part of the engagement a publication gets.
The more engagement a publication gets, the more the social network algorithm will show the publication to new users.
By implementing this low-effort rule for participants your post will get better performance and therefore more participants. Ask participants to share the post of giveaways on their own account and book mark /pin it to the top.
Again, the benefits of this rule are limited but in combination with other rules you can maximize your performance.

8. Share the post as a story

This is a popular rule that has its advantages and disadvantages. This rule consists in asking participants to share the giveaway publication/posts in their story to share it with all their followers.

This rule requires a lot of effort from the participants because often people don’t want to share giveaways in their story.

However, by paying attention to the other rules that you put in your giveaway you can maximize the participation of Internet users.

The benefits of this rule are important because all the people who subscribe to the participants will have the opportunity to see the giveaway story and will also be able to participate, which opens your giveaway to a much larger audience than yours. As a result, the algorithm will boost your giveaway post because you will have good engagement. The giveaway winner picker can select a winner from multiple platforms, therefore stories can be a good option to promote your business.

9. Multiple comments increases more chances to win

Here is a rule that is often used in giveaways on social networks.
More entries gives more chances to win the contest.

It is a giveaway contest rule that commenting more on same posts will give participant advantage of winning. This tactic gives the algorithm boosts the post to a larger audience.

However, it can sometimes be difficult to find a way to choose the winner that respects all the rules of the giveaway.

Osortoo is random winner generator that you can activate or not to give more chances to win to the participants who have commented several times on the giveaway publication.

10. Several @mentions give more chance to win

This is a rule that is often used in giveaways on social networks. It consists in giving more chances to win, thus giving more entries to the giveaway, for every additional @mentions published by the same participant in the same comment.

This is a rule that has the advantage of soliciting many @mentions by participants, which notifies the people identified and gives them a chance to enter the giveaway themselves.

This kind of approach tends to boost the publication to a larger audience. However, it can sometimes be difficult to find a way to choose the winner that respects all the rules of the giveaway. Beware of fake accounts. Sometimes these contest lead people to mention fake accounts. Read more about identifying fake accounts.

Osortoo uses a filter that you can enable or disable to give more chances to win to participants who have commented several @mentions on the giveaway publication, or to set a minimum number of mentions needed to enter the giveaway.

How many rules of participation should I apply to my giveaway?

By taking these parameters into account you can choose the strategy that suits you best. We recommend putting three or four participation rules in your giveaway if you want to increase your chances of having many participants as this is the standard number of rules.

• Easy entry: In this case, the more the merrier. It will let company engage lots of people. They could become their new customers.
• Difficult participation: Participants has to win through challenging tasks. This way, participants will be more invested in the activities. This can increase brand awareness among people. These are common in costly giveaway items. The brands want to grant and appreciate their loyal customers and people truly interested in their brand.
• Mandatory reposting, saving, subscribing and commenting: This is common requirement by both easy entry and difficult participation rules.
• When you are implying these rules. The multi platform giveaway picker will help you on all types of contests. That could be choosing winner from commenting on multiple posts. How come you will count, your die hard loyal fan? The answer is, try to optimize the giveaways using random winner generator. The multiplatform picker is not restricted just to one social media platform. This is amazing that you can select the winner, at once from all the point of contact of your participants.

Why should I use a random winner generator for my social media giveaway?

As you have seen, some of the rules of entering giveaways on social networks are complex, especially when it comes to the draw. A draw requires preparation, you need to be ready without any unpleasant surprises for the moment of the draw. That’s why Osortoo comes into play. Learn more about running a successful Instagram contest.

Our random winner generator allows you to apply the above-mentioned rules to your giveaway without worrying about the draw. Since your participation rules can be difficult to implement manually, Osortoo makes it easier and faster for you to apply filters and redraw winners.