A Beginner’s Guide To Hosting A Giveaway

Busy agents may find it hard to grow their social media presence through active engagement. In many cases, building a steady following on social media takes time. However, there are a few exceptions and tactics to help you boost your engagement. One of these tactics is a giveaway! 

A social media giveaway is a short-term form of promotion that counts on using a contest prize in exchange for action from your followers (liking, commenting, sharing). Hosting a giveaway can help you increase your social media reach and engagement, generate new leads for your mortgage or real estate clients, and create an overall buzz around you and your services.   

Let’s walk you through a few simple steps to help you host your own social media giveaway! 

Step 1: Identify Your Goal

Your first starting point in hosting a social media giveaway is to set a goal or purpose behind running the giveaway. What do you want to gain from hosting a giveaway? Is it to grow your followers, generate new leads for your business, or maybe build an email list? Once you identify the reasoning behind the giveaway, you’ll be able to create an effective giveaway campaign that will help you serve your original purpose and goals!

Step 2: Understand Your Audience & Pick A Prize 

The next step is to put yourself in the shoes of your audience! Ask yourself what they want and what their interests are. Once you understand this, you’ll be able to pick a prize that will motivate them to participate in your giveaway. 

For example, if you’re a mortgage or real estate agent and most of your followers are new and potential homeowners, you may want to give away tickets to a new movie and a restaurant gift card. Promote it as a ‘date night’ giveaway for any young first-time homeowners or couples looking to buy.

Another aspect you could consider is partnering up with local businesses that align with your company and using their products as a giveaway prize. Doing cross-promotion with other businesses will also expose you to another audience that may be in the same demographic you’re seeking. Partnerships help you reach a new audience and increase your industry connections! 

Step 3: Pick Your Platforms 

To help your giveaway run successfully, you’ll want to pick the right platform to host it on. Do some research to find out which social media platform your target audience uses most and which platform has given you the best engagement from your audience. To help find these answers, you can look at your social media analytics or run a few test posts to see how they perform on each platform.

 Step 4: Create Your Giveaway Post 

Now that you have your prize and social media platform for your giveaway, you’re ready to begin creating your promotional giveaway post! Think about how you’ll visually present your giveaway. For example, will a video or photo perform better on the platform you’ve chosen? Also, keep your caption writing in mind. Your sentences should be short, easy to read, and don’t be afraid to use emojis to guide your audience’s eyes to important information. 

The best way to receive entries will depend on your audience and making the giveaway rules user-friendly! For example, if your target audience is largely made of families, you’ll want to post your giveaway content during school hours/evenings, when parents may have spare time away from their children. 

You’ll also want to make the entry instructions simple and fast. Don’t ask too much of your followers to enter the giveaway. Liking, commenting, and sharing are generally the most popular entry instructions because they don’t require your audience to do any heavy-lifting. This way your followers will also organically share your page with their friends, expanding your reach and visibility to many other accounts!

Curious about what information to include in your giveaway post? Here’s an outline of the major points you won’t want to miss: 

• The start and end date of your giveaway 

• Who is eligible to enter the giveaway (age, country restrictions)

• The rules for entering the giveaway (liking, commenting, following, sharing your post, etc.)

• When and how the winner(s) will be announced 

• Details behind the prize (what the prize includes and how many will be won)

Step 5: Promote 

Once you have your giveaway post created, you’ll want to consider making a branded hashtag people can use when they engage with your giveaway. This will help you keep track of all the participants and increase your reach! Once your post is up and running, you’ll also want to continue promoting it on your social media.

 Consider posting stories on your social media platforms, reminding and directing your followers to enter the giveaway. You may even create daily posts counting how many days are left to enter and win! 

These are great strategies to increase your giveaway engagement, make the most of it, and create new content. When the giveaway closes, you’ll also want to make a final post announcing the winner and thanking everyone for participating!

Step 6: Maintain Your Social Presence with OpenHouse Marketing 

So you’ve hosted your giveaway, successfully landed new followers, and even a few leads for your mortgage or real estate business- what’s next? In order to keep the followers you gain from a promotional giveaway campaign, you need to keep them engaged. The best way to do this is through consistent, high-quality content posting.

That’s where our team at OpenHouse Marketing comes in! We provide self-serve marketing resources for the real estate and mortgage industry. You’ll have exclusive access to monthly updated social media content and marketing tools — so you can easily market your business and generate leads without spending countless hours struggling with your marketing. 

Ready to take your business to the next level? Click here to learn more!