 Now, what is a contest giveaway? It is a simple yet very effective marketing initiative that you can use to grow your audience and to grow your sales as you're starting to build your Instagram food business. What a contest is is something that you're giving away in value. So something like a $50 gift card or let's say a month worth of cookies or a month worth of ice cream. These are all valuable items for your audience in exchange for them to take a certain action, whether it be liking your post, whether it be tagging other of their friends about your posts. Those are all actions that they can take in order for them to win and have a chance to win your product on your prize. You can do this yourself or you can team up with an influencer. So then that way you can reach even wider audience. I recommend doing a contest giveaway every single month. So then that way you can stay relevant. Now, why is that important? It is because if you're growing your audience, bringing awareness to your brand consistently is what will bring you consistent sales. So that's the reason why I highly recommend doing a contest giveaway every single month. It also increases the repeat purchase from your existing followers already. And like I always say, it's all about the touch points. The more touch points that you have with your audience, the more likely they'll buy from you because you're just always top of mind. So for example, our bubble sore kit that we created as a case study, the more that we post, the more that people see it, the more that they would feel there's trust and whenever they're thinking about bubble tea, what did they think of first? They think of bubble sore kit whenever they're at home at 11 PM. They don't want to pay for delivery fees. What do they think of? They are thinking about our bubble tea kit. So it just imagine them scrolling and they see our Instagram page every time at night. That's how we're going to be able to get them to purchase again and again. It also allows you to be able to show your audience a appreciation for you to give back to them as well. So it's a really, really great way to reward them with engaging with your content. Now there are eight ways to launch a viral contest. First up, define your objective, decide to do it either on your own or with an influencer, pick your grand prize, determine the contest duration, determine how they can enter this whole contest, create your contest caption. So you can communicate this with your audience, launch and promote your contest, and then lastly, announce the winner. Let's dive right in. Number one, define your objective. Define what your objective of the contest is, whether you want more followers, more sales, or more likes for your post, this will allow you to cater how people are entering your contest. At the end of the day, if you have something that is very, very difficult for people to do in order for them to win, such as buying your item, that is a very high friction action that your audience has to take because it requires them to actually purchase something, right? For their chance to win. The likelihood for them to take that action is a lot less than if you were to just tell them, Hey, just like this picture for your chance to win. A lot more people will perform this action. So you need to understand the pros and cons of your objective because the more friction it is, the less likelihood for you to get the results, but nonetheless, there's no good or right or wrong answer. It really determines, it really depends on what you're looking for as your giveaway. I personally recommend to grow your audience because the more and the bigger your audience, the easier it is, the easier it is for you to be able to sell to them in the future. So I would just recommend you to determine your objective as to get followers and also tag your friends, right? Like and tag your friends. Now that you have decided that, Hey, all I want is more followers. Decide whether you want to do this by yourself or with an influencer. If you have less than a hundred followers, I would highly recommend you to not do it yourself because you just don't have enough people to promote to and not enough people to take action with. So then that way it's just not worth it. Now partnering up with an influencer, you can utilize their followers, which is a great way for you to grow. It also creates a win-win situation for you and your influencers because they love participating in giveaways. It's like, who doesn't want to have free stuff? And on top of that, when you partner up with your influencer, they become the host, they become the cool kids because they're giving away free stuff to people that follow them. That's the reason why they love hosting giveaways. Now that you have decided on that, pick your grand prize, pick something that is valuable for your target audience. It should align with their interests of your audience, something that is valuable and something that is relevant to your customers. So what do your followers win? It could be a $50 gift card. It could be a free product. It could be a month of free ice cream. That's, these are all things that we have done in the past and have seen tremendous success. Ultimately, if your prize is not good enough, and if it's not valuable enough in your consumer's eyes, not a lot, they won't take action. It's simple as that. You want to be able to host a contest. For example, if it's only for a $10 gift card, most likely people won't be that excited to take action, right? So ask yourself, are you going to be willing to take action for the value? Is it valuable? Next up, determine the contest duration. How long do they have to complete your requirements? For example, it could be five days. You post on February the first and the deadline for them to take that action is by February 6th. Typically, I would recommend having at least a minimum of one week in duration and why is that the case? Because if it is too short, if it is too short, they don't have enough time and you don't have enough time to promote your idea and this contest to your audience. Maximum, I would have the duration at two weeks. Why is that the case? Because if it's too long of a duration, if it is over a month, there's no urgency. People will be like, yeah, I'll do it later. Don't worry about it. They don't have that excitement, which is the reason why typically speaking, I see the best performance of within either a week or two weeks for launching a contest. Now, determining the ways to enter. This really is dictated by the goal that you have set out in step number one. So go back to that goal, whether you want more followers or you want more sales, if you're looking for more followers, then you can have them like the post tag a friend or follow your collaborators brand, the influencer that you're collaborating with, get them to follow them as well. Or you can get them to buy something. These are all very common ways for them to win an enter to win your price. You can mention about different ways as bonuses to win and increase your engagement as well. So for example, comment your favorite food or share this with on your Instagram story. These are all bonus entries that they can do a bonus actions that they can do in order for them to even get more entries. Now, the reason why we want to have bonuses is because some people don't mind doing extra work, then have that option for them to promote more for you. Now a pro tip for you is that you can also utilize an outside software such as King Sumo or viral loops or Viper.io. Why do you want to utilize these outside platforms and these tools? It is because if you want them to take on a more advanced strategy, for example, if you want more email subscribers, if you want more Facebook likes, or if you want YouTube likes, or if you want them to like your Facebook comment or whatever the case may be, or even watch a video, you can actually give them incentives to do so. Now, how do you do that? And how like, for example, if they like your posts, they get one entry, but if they share the posts, they get five entries. If they give you their email, then that's 10 entries. That becomes very, very advanced, right? So softwares like King Sumo and Viper.io is a great way for you to be able to build multiple channels all at once. But then again, I don't recommend this. If you're just starting off, this just complicates things. And even if you have their email address, what do you do with it? You don't really know what to do with it yet. Those are more advanced marketing strategy, which you can use later on. This is more for the advanced people. Okay. Next up is to create your contest captions. Grab your followers' attention by telling them it's a giveaway right off the bat, because your followers need to see that right away. Add emojis to make it more applicable and more personable. Your caption should include a mini introduction of your brand. The goal of your contest, your prize, ways to enter contest registration and how the winners will be selected, because you want to be as clear as possible. A lot of people just throw out contests, but they neglect a lot of the logistics. And when it's confusing and when you don't answer your audience's question, they are not going to enter, which is the reason why you need to include all these different types of questions and give them the answer in taking the action. So if you want to go into the link below, download this contest giveaway template, use it like yours and tweak it. So then that way, if it's into your objective, your brand and the people that you work with terms and conditions as well. So also something to note as well is for you to make sure to follow the legal guidelines from Instagram. A lot of times there are some, some things that you can't say, but once again, just check out their terms and condition is very, very self-explanatory. Copy and paste our caption and for you to fill in the blanks, go into the link below and download it. Now it is time to launch and promote your contest. Once you completed steps one to six, you can schedule your posts and during this whole period, make sure to constantly promote it. This is something that I see that a lot of people don't do that. They created a contest and they expect everyone to be jumping all over it. That's not how it works. People don't see it sometimes, right? So I'm not sure if you know, but Instagram only shows post of 10% of the people that you follow. So for example, if your audience follows a hundred people and a hundred accounts, Instagram only shows the top 10 to top 20% of people of accounts, right? So the more frequency you post, the more likelihood it's going to get seen. So don't worry about being too spammy. Share your contest on your IG and really promote it. Really let everyone know about the fact that you have this contest because you are already committed to giving away a product. So there is already a sunk cost, but if you don't promote it and not enough people enter, then you don't have the results that you're looking for. So make sure you start promoting it ASAP. Always include a call to action in any of the posts that you do. A lot of people once again, when they tell people about a contest, they don't tell them that, Hey, enter through this channel. And that is a really big, big mistake because when you don't have to call the action that really decreases the likelihood of your audience taking action. Have you seen your contest posts yet? Check it out. That's just an example for you. Make sure you share your contest posts on your Facebook page as well. Don't be afraid to promote your giveaway because people won't see it spam. It's just reminders for them. Royal thumb is that minimum. I challenge you to promote your contest at least three times on your feed out of the whole duration. At least three times is how much you should be promoting it. And lastly, announce the winner. This is really, really crucial. This is the moment that everyone's waiting for, but it is super important for you to be transparent because some people might be like, Hey, you know what, who knows who I give an announce a winner to. People know, so don't fall into that slippery slope of, Hey, you know what, maybe I can just give it, gift it to my friend or, Hey, you know what, I might just, you know, not give it away. Doesn't work like that. You always have to make sure you give it to someone and be transparent about this whole thing. Okay. So how do you pick a minute winner? You can manually put the entries in an Excel and use a free number generator, or you can have Instagram tools like Instagram comment picker or instant boom, which is also a great tool for you to be able to select the winners. And you can actually, as you can see here, that's a link for using this platform called Instagram comment picker. So how do you use it? Connect to your Facebook, select to the Facebook group that is connected to your Instagram account, select your giveaway posts under Instagram medias, select the giveaway option that applies to you. Click get comments, scroll down, select a winner. So once again, just click into the link and learn how to use it. They already have tutorials. It's a very, very simple way for you to pick a winner. You don't want to be spending hours sitting trying to log everyone's comments. It just doesn't work like that. Definitely use a comment picker tool. Now it is your turn. Go out there, create your first contest, use our template that we supplied to you in the links below and good luck.