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Top Giveaway Mistakes

So let's get into our top giveaway mistakes, and I wanted to talk about this I initially had hoped to have some live giveaways to show you some of the actual mistakes that people make, but I didn't want to be too harsh on them, so let me just I know I'm just gonna listed out here, and then you conceive, you can check with yourself to see if maybe you might be making any one of those mistakes, so if you have too many steps to enter, if you're going to ask them to go to the grocery store and pick up some milk and show you a picture of the milk box, and then you go brush your dog and like my page and went and no, no, no one is going to join your contest. Too many steps people are going to drop out at some point, so make it really, really easy for them wrong timing. You want to post your give away our contest around the times when you know people are going to be online, so, you know, an extreme case would be posting and given where contest past midnight, when everyone sleeping, so no one's...

going to see it, and I know you're you guys are smart, you're not going to do that, but definitely look into your analytics, so with facebook, you can check under view insights with instagram you can check with icahn a square with pinterest there a variety of aps out there to check for when you get the most re pins so that will give you a good idea for when you're your audiences online but you want to start your give away or contest kind of with a bang when your fans are online and to expand on that you don't want to do it too close to a holiday either because say if you're doing on christmas eve or christmas day or thanksgiving no one is going to be under computers no one's going to be checking their facebook unless you're the kid that's just I just leave me alone I just want to browse in the internet you know but for the most part tried to avoid those is that you can definitely have a christmas giveaway but have it a couple of weeks before the actual day because you want to be sure that people are aren't there on their computers I found for the most part holidays people tend to not be on the computers weekends people tend to not be on the computers either in the summertime when our sales drop people tend to be hanging outdoors a lot morris or not on their computers as well. So really think about your timing for your contests and giveaways if you're not being clear that it's a give away this is the number one and I guess I should have put this either on the first point or the last point, but in the giveaways that I wass reviewing, this is thie number one offender. Is that it's not clear to give away. So if you're doing a giveaway on social media, say, for example, instagram or even on facebook the moment that someone decides let me check facebook, they're going to go to their knees newsfeed, and they're going to start scrolling. They're just going to keep strolling until a picture or video that looks kind of cool just at a glance makes them stop. So if it's just a picture of your product, no one's going to know it's a giveaway unless it's a really great photo and then you have in the text description saying, it's a giveaway, but what I would recommend for you to do is use text over lease to just plaster on their give away so no one can miss it because the word giveaway is free stuff people are going to want to stop, but we first have to get their attention. So in order to do that, make it easy for them to spot that this is to give away, otherwise they're going to think always just another regular post. They're not going to stop to read for the most part anyway think most of us don't I'm guilty of that? I don't read everything I know some people do and are very diligent about that, but for the most part people out there are visual creatures they're going to be looking at pictures before they decide if they want to read something the price isn't right. We talked about this where all the bad prizes you can potentially give out, you know, don't do that I can often tell when I go into someone's instagram account if they've done to give away where the price wasn't right and you can tell that and you can check for yourself if this is you, if you have, say, two thousand instagram followers, but each of your posts on lee gets like ten likes or ten hearts a good ratio in terms of instagram engagement to have is about a three to five percent engagement rate, so if you have two thousand followers, you want to have something like at least sixty to one hundred hearts per photo and that's a great you know you're building an actual audience you're actually targeting give away followers that are part of your audience that are interested in your product and they are engaged in your brand and your in your business, so if you have a very low following like that I mean the first question I normally not a low falling a low engagement weight like that I normally ask the question and did you do it give away recently did you give away money and most of the time it's that the prize wasn't right or you did a loop giveaway where was given weight like a thousand dollars or something where you're getting a lot of followers but these followers are not people who are your customers if you're giveaway is not optimized for that specific social media platform is not going to operate or function as well. So a very obvious example is with facebook square images do a lot betterthan vertical images, so if you were going to post a vertical image kind of like a pinterest image on facebook it's not going to fill up the nice square space that facebook's layout does better with and it's going to make the picture look really small. Oh so for facebook you square pictures for pinterest tall pictures so use those vertical images for instagram as well square pictures and then for twitter if you're doing twitter images, twitter, contests or giveaways there they're horizontal so you want to make sure that you take the time depending on which social media platform you're going to give away on you take the time to design your graphic so that it is designed just for that social media platform okay and if you're giveaway is too far out, so if you've told people this giveaway ends in fourteen days, what I'm going to think is that all it's fourteen days, I have time, I have time, I don't have to join this now, I'm really busy now, but I'll come, I'll come back later to do it, and I'm going to forget to come back to do it, so make it short enough of a time frame that people are encouraged to do it now gives them that sense of urgency, I would say seven days is long enough, so anything between one to seven days is a pretty good number, and if you don't have a great photo of your product, if is a blurry photo, if it's ah low resolution photo, if the colors are great, if it's bad, poorly lit it's not going to attract people is not going to get them to want and desire that product or that price that you're giving away. So be sure you're using an excellent, amazing photo that will represent your product in the best light in this gary vaynerchuk quote, I think he talked about this in a podcast, and he said that the problem is we're all using social networks as a distribution instead of native platforms to actually tell stories, so basically, what I want to draw from here is that every social media platform is unique the pulse content that you're delivering to the social media platforms should be unique to the native environment, right? So instagram and facebook they cross over pretty well right cause of the square photos they do pretty well if you're sharing from one to the other, but if you're trying to do it with twitter because of the one hundred forty character limit, a lot of the times your facebook comments or your instagram descriptions are going to be truncated. It's going to have the ellipse ease dot dot dot and then there's going to be a picture where if you had a score picture and you have text overly that's on the top no one's going to see that cause is going to get cut off, right? So it's fine if you are doing a giveaway on facebook and you want to tell you other social media fans come over to my facebook page there's a giveaway coming going on here that's fine, but if you're expecting to take a giveaway on facebook and putting it on twitter so your twitter fans can also join on twitter and you're putting on pinterest your pinterest fans can also join on there if you want to do that, make sure that your pictures and your graphics are designed for those specific social media platforms do we have any questions about giveaway mistakes and giveaways in general? Sorry me um I'm laughing at myself because I'm listening to you and I made some pretty much all that this's great, but my question is what would be the best response if you take the time you pick your prize and you have someone that news your brand and they have something else they really really like and they say ok, I understand I won that but I want that what would be the best response to them other than saying no because I ran into that problem and I gave into it, but I did say, well, ok, we can do that as long as you post a picture maybe and link it back to my shop that would be great and they never did, so I'm sorry, so I'm it's a very curious thing that happen because I've never had that happened with me and was it the same value of nice point? Was it more? It was my that was so new I didn't okay, I didn't know better I wanted to give good customer service so I didn't wantto know so I didn't know what to do, so I went ahead and did it okay well, I think in a way you did the right thing with with what you had right and what I would do now if if someone asked me that and if they said they wanted a prize that was like twenty surprise or even even even if it was just a couple of dollars more, I would just tell them try to be polite about it of course you don't right? I understand you want to know you can't do that follow rules gosh, I would tell them this this giveaways only for this prize, but I appreciate your suggestion for having it to be this other prize I'll consider it for a future give away and just if they don't like it deal with it, they won, they got free stuff, right? I mean, what more could you ask for? I'm sorry you went through that experience? Thanks build character and yeah, yeah, I'm thinking about timing and collaborations with this question since I have a relatively low following right now there is a television show that is directly linked tio my neech and they're coming out with their season premiere in december. I think this is okay. My businesses, gifts and party supplies for women getting divorced and there's the girlfriend's guide to divorce their premiere for season two is coming up in december and since I have a low following, would it be okay to sort of target that date as a giveaway for a wine glass let's say and use their hashtag to sort of generate okay well thank your face I guess that's a yes ok so it's no like I think that is and I have mentioned this in the past two days in the state against your writing and someone else coattails that's going tio increase the chances and the results of your you're going to get to all these other eyeballs senior stuff and it's perfect timing right that's that's great that's great and what I would actually do is reach out to the people that manage this tv shows ah social media and see if they'd be willing to share your giveaway yeah just just ask really simply just ask if you don't ask you don't get what you ask you might get it and if they were to share with their fans that's a great idea I have a question I have a little different kind of product of the theater companies you know and we do maybe one or two shows a year so there's a lot of dead time in between you know when we're doing a show we give we give away two gets to our show but we like to sort of still engender that far promote following when we're not in production so I'm wondering could we ask people toe do we give away or like us and give away you know tickets to our community partners productions or you know another partner like a friend theater? Yeah even those on our product? Yeah, I think that the perfect so those that's one of the rare cases where, in your scenario, we're giving away your product doesn't seem to make sense because you don't have any productions out but your audience or people who watch productions who love theaters. So it totally makes sense to give out giveaways to tickets to your sister production houses, I think that's a great idea. Yeah told wrightson thanks and there's. Two questions from the online audience bracelet wanted to know, actually, let me ask murphy's question first, because place let's sort of ok a second question based on that so smurfy want to know after the contest is over and you've migrated the people to your regular email list? Do you put them in an email sequence like sending them a welcome email and you write them a special welcome letter? And how long do you wait before sending them an email after the contest? Is there a timeline for that? I normally don't wait too long. I just decide when I at the time I'm going to move them over or if I if I can anticipate that I'm sending a broadcast email out to my main list and I want to make sure that might give away subscribers are also getting that email, then I'll move them over before I send out my broadcast in terms of the auto responder I think that's up to you if you think they will benefit from that or if you think you don't want to inundate them with your auto responder and I love that question because I use an auto responder for my tiny hands jewelry business, I have seven e mails or if it was a five e mails that go out every week and it's up to you if you think they will benefit from it and if they'll stand something to get out of it. In my case, I think I would I would start them at sequence number ones and them that email and have them go through the same experience that everyone else joining that nailing this goes through because they haven't already been in that email sequence, and if your email service is smart enough to do this, it will not. It will not import duplicate subscribers. So your extra sure that those people have never been through your sequence before and piggybacking on that question lay split wanted to know, do you need to say on the sign of form that this ofsome into your e mailing list an email list I can really? Yes, I do always say that, so I would on the sign up form itself, I would say that you're going to be signed up just kind of a little privacy policy thing and a little terms of service or turn notice just tow so that they expect so that they know this is what they're signing up for. Well, what? Taking that step one step back on that social media if you're on facebook or instagram promoting your give away, I would say in order to be notified who the winner is joined this link and then send them off to that link and then on that sign up form, there will be a little notice in the bottom that says you, you will be signed up to our analyst, but we promise not to send you span, and we promise not to sell your email address just the little small notice like that. Most people don't worry about that stuff, but it's, good to have it on there and there's. One final question you mentioned not to dio giveaways that were too long in duration, and so the question was, what is the what have you tried? And how has it worked in terms of timing, the three days the best, one week, two weeks? So that giveaways that I do on the tiny hands jewelry page and on social media, we tend to do about seven days in general, I feel like that's pretty good. I have done in the past shorter time frames, and I feel if it's any less than forty eight hours of its twenty four hours it's kind of funny with facebook, especially I would post something on facebook today, and my husband who's sitting next to me is only seeing that on its news feed like two days later, so that timing matters. I think so. If you make it a little bit too short, you might not be giving people you might not be kicked having as many people entering your give away, so maybe three days, I think is a good number, but also checked the timing with if it is going to run over on a weekend. Are your fans the type of people to be hanging online over the weekend? If you're doing friday, then if you're setting up your gig away or contests on friday, then I would maybe and make sure that you're at least covering a couple of week days in there, but I think three to seven days air good, but I would also tested out with your audience because every business is going to be different.