I am pretty sure almost all of us love giveaways. However, only some lucky winners will get picked and that’s okay. At first, I thought giveaways were just a scam that I was like, “Oh, please that was just your sick plot to get those people to spam-like your posts and follow your social media account. The winners are probably going to be one of your employees pretending to be one of your customers.” I said that because I never won any giveaway contest before. I once joined a giveaway contest created by a contemporary art museum in the city I’m currently residing in, and in that contest, I had to write a heart-touching letter in the comment section and if I won, I would be given a free ticket to that museum. Considering that the ticket price is quite costly for a museum in my country (about $15 per ticket), I willingly joined the contest in hope I would win the free ticket. Sadly though, I didn’t even win even though I got the most likes and good replies in my comment section, so I was quite disappointed with the result. But then about a month ago (this was exactly a month after the museum ticket giveaway contest), I received a message from one of the famous talk shows in my country that I won a smartphone after participating in a voting event they held a few months ago. I remember voting for my brother in-law who was a nominee for that event and posting a comment on his photo on the talk show’s social media account. However, there is one thing I should note for this experience; I did not even notice there was a prize from the beginning. My original intention was to vote and comment for my brother in-law and I didn’t even know there was a prize from the beginning. So I went back to their post on Instagram and just noticed this sentence at the end of the caption; “There will be an interesting prize waiting for you.” From this experience, I know that giveaways are real, guys, only if the events are made by people who hold their responsibility and keep their promise. If you are a business owner looking to hold a giveaway contest, I will tell you the proper ways to make it more meaningful not just for your brand, but also for your customers. Keep reading to find out!

Here’s how you run a proper and meaningful Instagram giveaway:

• Choose the prize for your giveaway
• When choosing the prize, make sure you calculate everything starting from the budget, the chance of ROI and the impact
• Be sincere. That’s the key. Why? When you are running a giveaway event, you want your audience to be happy with what you are doing for them. Think of it as a way to give thanks to those who always buy from your business and those who are enthusiastic for your product.
• If you are only running this giveaway based solely on profits, it will be meaningless, especially if you cheat on this contest. How? I don’t know about now, but back then there were many businesses that tricked their customers into believing that this contest was real. They made people buy some of their products and wrote the buyers’ name as if it was going to be chosen randomly, but somehow the names announced as the winners were their employees. Simply put, if you are not sincere, don’t run it at all.
• Set easy and understandable requirements to get the prize like commenting on your specific photo, tagging friends in the comment, giving testimonials about your products or just registering for the giveaway contest.
• For registration part, you can list the names and randomise the winners by going live on Instagram to make sure it is real. There are a lot of websites like random.org that can provide randomisation for free.

With a sincere giveaway contest, you are not only getting more ROIs, you are also getting your audience’s respect and that is more important than anything. Once you get their respect, they will also trust your brand. When your brand is trusted, more people will come and buy from you.