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5 Reasons Your Social Giveaway Will Fail

To get a huge boost in social media followers, you’ve come up with a great giveaway that anyone in your industry would want.

People should be knocking down your door to enter the giveaway, but all they have to do is like or follow you, it couldn’t be any simpler, right?

You’d like to think so, but it doesn’t always work the way you want.

There are many reasons your social giveaway could fail, but here are some of the most common reasons I see, hopefully this will help you put on a successful promotion, the next time you want to grow.

Fix Your Social Giveaway Before It Fails

1- No Traffic to the Giveaway

An important part of doing a giveaway like this is to make sure you have traffic to send to the giveaway, if not, no one will see it, and no one will participate. Luckily you will get some viral traffic to the giveaway, as long as you get a nice amount of beginning entries. In case you are worried about getting your giveaway off the ground, here are some traffic ideas:

Blog post- submitted to social media websites
Press release
Friends and family
Email to your list of customers/newsletter subscribers, etc
Social media advertising

2- Your Prize Isn’t Drawing in Votes

Sometimes the prize just isn’t lined up with the people you are offering it to. For instance, a Gander Mountain giftcard may not go over well on a fanpage for lingerie fans.

Your prize needs to be something your fans WANT or even NEED to get. The more in sync it is with your fan’s like and wants, the better off your giveaway will do.

3- It Wasn’t Open Long Enough

If you have a small following as it is, a short giveaway will not help. You need something that will last a couple of weeks or longer, so that you have ample time to advertise it.

You might consider scheduling out posts in advance, and hitting up every opportunity you have to make sure the giveaway gets out there. Consider forums, classified ads, other blogs, giveaway sites, Twitter hashtags, and Google hangouts if possible.

4- There Wasn’t Continuing Coverage

Initially sending traffic to your giveaway, probably will not be enough. You need to continuously remind your social networks, friends and followers to enter.

The reason being is that, not everyone will be on everytime you post about it. And remember, with Facebook, only up to 25% of your fans will see it at all (depending on your numbers), so you want to write about it continuously.

You might also consider partnering with another fanpage for your giveaway. Possibly a medium sized fanpage that will showcase you and write to their fans about the giveaway regularly through the time it is open. Think of a brand that would be helpful to work with, and then approach them, consider several to contact, in order to get a real opportunity of having someone as a partner.

5- Visitors Don’t Trust the Brand

One last reason people might not want to join the giveaway is they do not trust the brand. If you are asking for a lot of information, or your fanpage (or other profile) do not present a professional presence, people may not take you seriously, or want to follow your fanpage.

It’s important to make sure their fears of trusting your brand are covered because regardless of the giveaway, if this is an issue, your brand will fail to thrive.

If you need help with your social giveaway, we can set you up with a schedule, help you choose a prize, and set up the application you are going to use. Just contact us and we will help you get started.