Social Media Giveaway Ideas to Excite and Engage Your Customers

Social media is an important platform that companies can use to engage with their customers, but it can often be hard to find ways to make your social media content engaging. One of the best ways to get your customers excited and engaged with your brand is to do promotional giveaway contests. Customers love free things, and even if it doesn’t cost customers anything, contests like these act as easy marketing for you as you gain more likes, comments, and subscriptions on your page. Interested? Read on for some social media giveaway ideas to launch your next promotional campaign online. 

Social Media Giveaway Gift Ideas

When planning your giveaways, what you give away can often be just as important as how you give it away. Luckily, there’s plenty of excellent options to choose from that are sure to excite your customers. Here are just a few of the more popular social media giveaway ideas to consider that are easy to put together and easier to give away. 

Gift Baskets

Promotional gift baskets are a great crowd-pleaser thanks to the variety of their contents. With a good gift basket, there’s usually something for everyone. As a rule of thumb, every gift basket should contain some kind of food, like cookies or  chocolate, or something you can use to make food. Everything else should be thematically pointed toward your company. For example, if you’re a clothing retail store, think shirts and accessories, whereas a plumbing business should lean more toward bath products. Gift baskets are great to give away to contest and raffle winners, as you’re likely not going to want to give away more than a few at a time. 

Company Products and Services

Another social media giveaway gift idea that anyone can give is whatever you’re already selling! Whether it’s a free spa day or a produce coupon, giving away your own products and services works double-time to market your business. On the one hand, customers are getting excited to engage with your brand and feel rewarded. On the other hand, they’re also getting the opportunity to try out your products or services when they otherwise might not have. If they have a positive experience with what they try, they’ll tell their friends and you get even more customers and positive attention. The best part? You can do giveaways like this on a monthly or even weekly basis depending on your budget, which gives you lots of attention to your social media. 

Promotional Swag

Another giveaway that can both increase your social media engagement and get you additional marketing power is promotional swag. T-shirts with the company logo, travel mugs, canvas totes, and more can easily be customized to carry your brand and given out to lucky customers on social media. These items are often easy to buy in bulk, allowing you to do frequent giveaways, on a weekly or even daily basis! On top of that, whenever customers use these prizes at home or on the go, they take your logo along with them for greater brand visibility. 

Facebook Giveaway Contest Ideas

Facebook is a great place to host giveaway contests thanks both to its popularity and its ability to target users based on their location. This makes it easy for small businesses to get their giveaway opportunities in front of local consumers with ease. Many companies host simple contests where consumers will like, share, and comment on a post in return for raffle points towards a prize. This is a great way to quickly boost how many people follow your company Facebook page and to spread the word of your company quickly.  

If you’re looking for Facebook giveaway contest ideas to drive people to your physical store, you can also do a scavenger hunt contest or trivia contest where customers have to visit your store to answer questions correctly or find hidden objects. This is great for large-ticket giveaways like gift baskets or free products and services. Another great giveaway option that fits well with the format of a Facebook post would be an online service or charity event, where customers would exchange hours of service or charity donations for smaller prizes like promotional swag or coupons. This helps show your company is involved in bettering the community and increases your social media engagement at the same time. 

Important tip: Social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter require that you include a contest disclaimer saying that the social media sites are “in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Instagram.” 

Instagram Contest Giveaway Ideas

Where Facebook is word-heavy with a few pictures, Instagram is all about the pics. That means any contest or giveaway you host on your company Instagram should be photo-centered as well. One popular Instagram contest giveaway idea is a selfie contest, where customers submit selfies of themselves using your services or products, or having a good time at your business, then tag your business to spread your exposure. This helps customers engage with your brand both online and offline, as well as gives you a lot of free promotional content that you can use (with the customer’s permission.)  

Another great Insta-worthy contest is a photo-caption contest. This works best if you have some kind of mascot (or employees with great facial expressions) that can pose in pictures about your business. This works best for companies that want to show a more human and humorous side, such as restaurants, activity centers, and other recreationally-based businesses that don’t mind looking a little silly for the sake of entertainment. For more serious companies like small law firms, home repair shops, and B2B companies, you can still play on this idea by asking customers to help name a product, vote between favorite images, or help you create a hashtag for your next marketing campaign. 

Twitter Giveaway Contest Ideas

While giveaway contest ideas on Instagram focus on images, Twitter is all about the quick quips and catchy catchphrases. This makes it harder for some companies to know how best to engage customers on that platform. The secret is in the hashtag. Get your own hashtag trending by asking customers to share a brief story of how it relates to them or what they like about it. For example, a dentist could start the hashtag #cleanteeth, and customers would engage by sharing their experience with the dentist’s cleaning services or how it could benefit them. The best comments get a prize and are shared by the dentist for additional promotional value. 

Another Twitter contest option is much like Facebook’s like, comment, and share contest, only with Twitter it’s follow and retweet. The more your customers retweet your giveaway contest, the more people see it, and the more people engage. At the end, a lucky retweeter gets a prize and you get a lot of easy exposure for your brand. This is especially useful when you’re trying to spread the word about an event you’re hosting at your business or an in-store promotion. Contests like these are so versatile that they can be used for promoting just about anything and any company, and all it takes to start is a prize and a tweet! 

Contests, prizes, and giveaways are great tools to both engage with your customers on social media and to increase your brand’s exposure. To get the greatest marketing value for your efforts, let your social media giveaway ideas serve a dual purpose. Let your prizes carry your brand, use contest shares and retweets to promote your latest products and sales, and encourage customers to come and use your products and services themselves as part of your contests. This way, you get so much more than just social media attention, you get prime marketing that translates into more sales. Looking for more ways to give away? Check out our post on Giveaway Ideas to Boost Your Audience IRL! You can also check out our pages on Facebook and Instagram for more great giveaway tips.