Every YouTuber wants to increase their engagement and it shows the overall performance of any channel. If you want to grow your channel on YouTube fast and want a quick engagement boost, YouTube giveaways are a fun way to achieve your goal. This blog has listed excellent ideas for YouTube giveaways and how to do YouTube giveaways with step-by-step procedures.
There are plenty of giveaway contest ideas but this blog focuses on creative YouTube giveaway ideas and methods to do YouTube giveaways in easy steps.
Types of YouTube Giveaways
If you have just started a new YouTube channel and do not have any idea how to do YouTube giveaways, this article is for you.
Standard Giveaway
These are the giveaways that you can organize easily and engage your subscribers while attracting the target audience with an attractive contest prize.
You can run two types of giveaways.
1- Winner takes all
2- Randon draw
In the both above types, you draw winners from your subscribers’ list.
Comment to Win
The second type of giveaway to engage your audience is to ask for comments on any specific video. In this method, you can ask them to ‘comment below’ your video to enter a giveaway.
Bonus Tip: You can do marketing to get more comments on your social media channels. For this purpose, you can add a call to action in your video description so that entrants can know what they need to do. Also, give information about your giveaway in your video so that your entrants can follow the instructions. Then draw winners from the comments when it is the right time to announce.
Talent Contest
This is also a famous giveaway entry method that includes talent or skill. In this method, you can ask your fans to submit videos to enter giveaways. The content of your video could be about your business.
What are YouTube Giveaways?
Businesses do YouTube giveaways to encourage user engagement and give something back to their audience. Many successful YouTubers launch campaigns and do giveaways for subscribers to draw new ones. In return, they build views, followers, and subscribers on the platform to drive more traffic to your other sites. Whether you have an online business, a blogger, or an influencer, you can grow your business on YouTube.
A YouTube giveaway is a contest to win something in exchange for an action.
These can be;
- Subscribing to your channel.
- Liking or commenting on a video
- Visiting your website or any other social platform
Does YouTube Allow Giveaways?
Yes, YouTube allows giveaways but you must follow their policies, community guidelines, rules, and terms of service.
YouTube has a strict policy regarding it. Here are some pointers to know:
- Your YouTube giveaway should be open to the public and free to enter.
- You should be aware entrants about clear rules and make sure your rules align with YouTube’s policies.
- Your giveaway should not include any criminal activity.
- Your giveaway must not encourage the copyright from any third-party users.
Why Should You Do YouTube Giveaways?
Here is the list of reasons why should you do giveaways.
Brand Awareness
YouTube giveaways are an excellent tool to reach new audiences because most people love to share with their followers and friends about giveaway prizes.
Get More Views and Subscribers
If you do a giveaway to your subscribers who subscribe to your channel upon watching your video, you will likely get more views and subscribers.
Increase Engagement
If you announce a giveaway, more people will like, comment, and share your videos/
Generate Leads
YouTube giveaways can generate leads in the sense that, for instance; if you have an exclusive video membership, you can transfer YouTube viewers to your membership sites.
Step-by-Step Process to Do YouTube Giveaways
Here is a step-by-step guide to do YouTube giveaways.
Set Goals for Your Giveaway
Before starting your YouTube giveaway, you must know what are your goals and what you want to achieve.
Your goals can be;
- Getting more subscribers
- Working with other YouTubers
- Sell more of a product
After identifying your goal, you can run a better YouTube giveaway.
However, using the SMART method can help you set your goals.
Specific
Be specific and decide what goal you want to achieve like more subscribers or followers.
Measurable
Identify how you will count your results like website clicks or new followers.
Attainable
Make sure to make your goals realistic and smaller.
Relevant
Select goals that are relevant to your audience’s interest or their needs.
Timely
You must decide in advance for how long your contest will run.
Select a Great Prize
Make sure to choose a great prize that entices your audience to follow your guidelines to achieve the giveaway.
- The prize should be appealing and purposeful for your target audience.
- It should be affordable and align your budget to give it for free.
- You can give a digital price like gift cards or discounts.
Design Your Giveaway
Picking a giveaway type and designing it by following a process is essential. There are multiple ways to design a giveaway. You can choose a giveaway based on your marketing goals that work best for your business.
Here are common types of giveaways.
- Comment to win
- Standard giveaways
- Collaboration videos
- Talent contest
- User-generated videos
- Polls and surveys
Define the Rules and Guidelines of Your Giveaway
Making rules for your giveaway is a good idea because good rules protect you and your viewers from any misunderstanding. Make sure to check all rules like it is against the law to make people buy something to enter your giveaways.
- What countries can enter?
- Who can enter?
- How many times can one person enter?
- What should they include if they need to make videos or pictures?
- Start and end time of the giveaway?
- How you will choose winners and where you will announce them?
Run Giveaway on YouTube
Here are different ways to publish your YouTube giveaway. Follow the below-mentioned methods to run giveaways on YouTube as quickly as possible.
Using RafflePress
RafflePress is a giveaway plugin on WordPress that makes it easy to run giveaways. In this method, you need to set up your contest on the WordPress website and put the link in your YouTube video description.
- First, you will grab a copy of RafflePress then download and install the plugin to your WordPress website.
- After you install and activate RafflePress, you will click on the Add New button to create a giveaway.
- Then it will take you to a new screen. On this screen, you will name your giveaway and select a template for your contest.
- There are many templates that you can choose from. For instance; if you want to grow on YouTube, you can click on the Grow Your YouTube Channel template.
Promote Your YouTube Giveaway
Here is the final step to promote your YouTube giveaway.
Ideally, you want to create a marketing strategy. You spent all that time creating a creative giveaway, so your promotion needs to be just as creative.
You can use email marketing or social media marketing as long as you’ll be able to reach the right target audience for your contest.
Here’s an example to-do list that you can use as a guide:
Before the Contest:
- Prepare the landing page.
- Create promotional graphics for social media platforms.
- Use hashtags to keep track of the entries outside of YouTube.
- Put together a list of influencers to reach out to.
During the Contest:
- Reach out to the influencers on your list.
- Start Facebook or Google ads.
- Host a live stream to promote the giveaway.
Announce Your Winners
At this final step, you will announce the winner by following these steps.
- First, pick the winner
- Then, announce the winner in one of your videos.
OR
- You can create a special video to announce the winner.
- Finally, send a follow-up email to everyone who participated and joined your team.
Wrapping Up
Finally, it is time to wrap the gifts that your lucky subscribers won and deliver them. The above comprehensive guide is a great inspiration for you if you want to do YouTube giveaways to your subscribers.