How to Create a Social Media Contest [Step-By-Step Guide]

Are you looking for an effective, quick, inexpensive way to grow your business?

A social media contest or giveaway could be the perfect solution for you. Here’s why a giveaway can help:

• Grow your social media following. Get more Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter followers… automatically!
• Increase your email list. More email list subscribers means more potential customers for your product
• Drive more revenue. Get more eyeballs on your products, websites, or services!

And much more…

Don’t just take our word for it, though. Recently, we generated 6,144 emails subscribers with one simple giveaway:

Often, the hesitation for social media influencers and business owners is simple…

“How do I actually run a social media contest or giveaway?”

We’re here to help.

In this post, you’ll learn 4 steps to run a successful social media contest or giveaway.

Plus, we’ll share social media contest examples, creative social media contests, and more to get you going.

Let’s get started…

4 steps to a successful social media contest

1. Set an objective

How will you judge the success of your social media contest? It could be…

• New social media followers
• New product sales
• More email subscribers

There are a ton of reasons you might want to run a giveaway contest. Start by defining the “success” metric so you can stay focused.

If you don’t know what you’re contest objective is, how will you know if it’s been successful?

When it comes to think about the real, tangible value success will bring to your company.

2. Choose a prize that rocks

Psst. Want to know a secret?

…social media contests and giveaways often fail because their prizes suck:

• They’re too generic (“win an iPad!”)
• They don’t excite the audience (“get this FREE lame little pin!”)
• No one cares enough to enter (“here’s this tiny thing you don’t care about!”)

Want your social media contest to smash your targets?

Find a prize (or prizes) that your niche is super excited about.

For example, here are some social media contest statistics that show just how powerful giveaway contests can be…

We were able to get 6,411 entries from a book giveaway that cost about $60!

Imagine if you had 6,411 engaged social followers on your Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. That’s worth $60!

Why did this work? Simple:

1. Our audience is interested in business and marketing
2. Seth Godin’s books are incredibly well resected in this niche
3. Entrants know these books (the prize) will help them toward their goals

What does YOUR audience like?

Here are some prize ideas to get you started:

• Product from your business or niche
• Consulting call (you can share your tips on something you’re good at)
• Books that your followers would like

Sometimes, you can even get products for free!

To REALLY make your giveaway successful, partners can help by providing prizes and promoting your giveaway.

If you promise to tag them or mention them in your promotion, sometimes they’ll reciprocate by emailing their list and sharing with their audience across social media.

To get started, come up with a list of 10-15 potential partners and drop them an email about getting involved.

Here’s an example from Julien Marion who used giveaways to grow an email list:

Often, the most successful social media contests have prizes that appeal to the lifestyle and passions of your audience.

Once you have your prize (or prizes) in the bag, it’s time to get this show on the road…

3. Set up your contest

“How do I actually set up a social media contest?”

You might think this is the hardest step. But, it’s actually really easy…

There’s a free social media contest platform called KingSumo to help you set up your giveaway in minutes.

When creating together your giveaway:

1. Give it a short, snappy title headline
2. Create some high-quality images/visuals to showcase the prize(s)
3. Write a solid description to help people understand why they want to win

Here’s a great contest landing page example:

Pro tip: Keep your giveaway contest length short — don’t keep your entrants waiting to know if they’ve won.

This is SUPER important and overlooked by many giveaways.

There’s no magic contest length, but I’d say you want to be aiming for anything between 1-2 weeks to give you time to promote your contest and get enough entries in.

You could even experiment with “flash” giveaways lasting just a day or two.

Anything longer, and people lose interest or forget.

4. Promote your contest

Now you’re ready to go. Your contest is all set up, but how will you get entries?

Here are a few ways to promote your contest:

1. Offer bonus entries for social shares: This is an awesome way to boost entrants and it’s even baked right into KingSumo, making it super easy to reward people who share your contest with more chances to win.This is also how you grow your social media following! Give bonus entries if people follow you on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter
2. Message your lists: If you already have an email list, a Slack community, or even a bunch of subscribers on Facebook Messenger, send a message out about your contest. Here’s an example message promoting a contest:
3. Promote on social media: Your followers on social media are highly likely to be interested in your giveaway, so sharing it to your social channels is a no-brainer.But if you want to reach new audiences, try sharing in Facebook Groups, using new hashtags on Twitter and Instagram. or even finding relevant subreddits to post. Top tip: always make your posts relevant to each audience, just like Sam Jeffries:

Pro tip: Check each social network for any guidelines on how you can promote giveaways on their channels. For example, “share to win” contests are no longer allowed by Facebook.

Ready to launch an awesome social media contest?

So there we have it, how to launch a social media contest in just 4 simple steps:

1. Set an objective
2. Choose prize(s)
3. Set up your contest
4. Promote your contest

And before we leave, here’s one more bonus tip…

BONUS: Ensure everyone’s a winner

Once your social media contest or giveaway is over, announce the winners as soon as possible.

To make even the non-winners happy, the trick is to provide all entrants with something that makes them feel special. This could be:

• Free download (content upgrade, eBook, or more)
• Discount code
• The chance to be entered into the next giveaway for free

For example, in one of our recent giveaways, everyone who entered received a bunch of discount codes just for entering — this way, no one leaves empty handed.

And it drove a TON of sales!

Ready to launch your own social media contest giveaway?

Take the steps outline in this giveaway, and use the free social media contest platform KingSumo to get started!