Social media contests help you engage both new and current families, as well as grow your following rapidly. Whether you’re offering a percentage off tuition, a discount on summer camp registration, or free tickets to an upcoming event at your center, a contest will spark excitement among parents and get them talking to new families about your center.
How to Run a Social Media Giveaway
1. Determine the Goal
Before anything, identify what it is that you’re trying to achieve with the giveaway. Your objective may be to improve your post engagement, increase your following, grow your email list or generate awareness of your center. Your goal will guide the rules of your giveaway.
2. Come Up with a Contest Type
Once you’ve decided on your goal, it’s time to determine what type of contest you’re going to host! If you’re looking to increase your following, request participants to follow your page or profile to enter. If you want to grow your email list, ask entrants to sign up on your website or submit their email address. If you’re looking to generate awareness, request that participants share your giveaway on their profile or tag a friend in the comments. If you are simply looking for curated content for your center’s social media content calendar, run a photo contest!
3. Select a Prize
Your social media contest prize or incentive should be something related to your child care center. Giving away something like an Apple gift card just to gain traffic isn’t going to bring in participants who will actually benefit you, like young millennial parents.
While you want your prize to be significant enough to be deserving of participation, it should be of value to your target market and in your center’s budget. For example, you could offer a discount on one child’s tuition for the year, a free week of summer camp or tickets to your next large event.
4. Define Contest Rules
Once you’ve selected a prize for the contest, you’ll want to decide how users will participate in the contest. Your entry requirements may be to follow your account, like the post, mention other parents in the contest, post a photo with a hashtag, sign up for your email list on your website or share the post on their story. To get the most out of your giveaway, invite users to do more than one of these criteria, but keep it limited to about three steps.
Be sure to set a contest start and end date, whether the contest is three days long or one full week. Then, determine how you will choose and notify the winner. Will you use a random generator tool online or judge the entries for a winner? Will you email the winner, message them or share on your page?
5. Choose a Platform
Figure out which platform will likely generate the largest response to your giveaway, or which platform you would like to grow. Instagram and Facebook are your best options to choose from for your giveaway, with plenty of sharing options. You may even want to share the contest on both platforms!
6. Launch the Contest
Launch your contest with an engaging image or graphic of the prize you’re offering that will get families excited about entering. Don’t forget to include the prize, terms of entry and contest rules in your post.
To ensure that you reach as many people as possible, be sure to cross-promote it to your Facebook or Instagram Story, Facebook groups, email newsletter or local influencers.
7. Evaluate Your Contest
After you’ve ended the contest and followed up with the contest winner, it’s important that you take a look at the results. Find out how well your social media contest performed by measuring participation, and increases in followers, website clicks or email subscribers. Use those results to improve your next contest!
