How to Have an Effective Giveaway

by Summer Koering

Giveaways can be a valuable and effective way to grow your audience and help them to feel like a part of your ministry.

You can use giveaways to both make your social account known and gain exposure to others who don’t follow your account.

The truth is, everyone loves free stuff. But teenagers and college students are a good audience to aim for when doing a giveaway.

Why?

Because when they’ve formed a relationship with a club on campus, an organization or a church, teenagers and college students love to represent that group by sporting swag with the group’s logo on it.

Here is an example of what we did with our followers:

Caption: It’s spring cleaning time and we have swag to give away! We want to know how your friends have impacted your relationship with God.

Follow us and tag 2 friends
In the comments, tell us and them how they have impacted your relationship with God
Winners will be announced on the story in 2 days at 3:30pm EST

Here are a few steps you can take to create your own effective and meaningful swag giveaway.1. What is the reason for the giveaway?

First things first. You need to have a clear understanding of the purpose for your giveaway. Meaning, don’t just do a giveaway for a giveaway’s sake.

Are you trying to:

promote an event?
build the amount of people who “follow” or “like” you on social accounts?
receive more engagement from existing followers?
let people know your ministry exists and what it’s all about?

What is the purpose behind the giveaway?

2. Ordering the gifts

To state the obvious: What you’re giving away is of vital importance to the effectiveness of your giveaway.

Try to stay up to date with your choice of giveaway items and make sure they are relevant to the age you want to target.

Young adults love getting t-shirts and water bottles. Those two items are timeless and could be used for almost any giveaway.

Every year there is a new trend in what people enjoy. So make sure you’re paying attention to what your target audience currently values.

3. Come up with a plan for how to do the giveaway

Want more exposure to people who don’t “follow” or “like” you? Require them to tag a friend in the comments.

A good example of this would be saying something like: “Tag a friend in the comments and tell them how much they’ve helped you grow in your relationship with God.”

This is a good way to gain exposure to their friend, and it makes their friend feel good too. It isn’t a guaranteed “follow” or “like,” but it’s a great way to introduce your account to them.

Be sure to set a hard deadline of when the giveaway ends. This will present urgency to your “followers” or people who “like” your page.

4. Be creative with your giveaway announcement post

Use your imagination and the different features in Instagram to present the posts in a variety of ways.

One idea is to get the attention of your audience with a fun caption full of emojis.

Now, go giveaway things!

Next steps:

Since 1951, Cru has helped individuals who grapple with integrating faith into daily life by offering practical steps and community support. As a result, countless people in over 190 countries have been empowered to move from passive belief to active faith.

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