Having a good social media following is crucial to getting an audience to your blog. If you want people to repetitively see your posts and visit your articles, then having a good social media following is a great way to keep them coming back.
However, building that social media following isn’t easy. There’s either the long and patient method, asking people to follow you or one of the most effective ways to increase your following for free or for very little money is by doing giveaways.
By doing giveaways you can create rules on how people enter. You should make these rules easy enough for everyone to enter but also an easy way to get your social media platform shared around. I’d recommend getting people to share the post/tweet around as this will gain traction on the post itself and then encourage people to follow you as well. These two simple things will allow your audience to grow very quickly. (I grew over 100 followers in a week on Instagram with this one simple technique.)
However, what the hell do you have to offer? Well, fortunately, you don’t need to give away 10s of thousands of pounds (or dollars) of technology to guarantee that people will enter your giveaway. There are plenty of options of very cheap things you can offer or even free things. Below are just some ideas of what you can offer to your followers.
FREE GIVEAWAYS
Promotion on your social media platform – FREE
One of the easiest things to offer people is the offer of promotion. If you tell people that you’ll share their posts, do a post about them or mention them in your stories, they’ll see this as free promotion and want to enter your giveaway.
This works better the bigger following you already have. If your following isn’t that high, this may not appeal to many. However, any promotion is free promotion and so you’d be surprised at how many people will find this offer intriguing.
Promotion on your blog – FREE
Another free option you can offer them is the option to win free promotion on your blog or website. You could offer to do an interview with them to give them some exposure on their own platform of choice. A lot of bloggers love this form of promotion as they want to talk about the motives behind their blog. Check out my Blogger Spotlights for some examples of questions to ask.
Professional advice giveaways – FREE
As part of your platform, you may offer blogging tips and tricks. On my blog, I do a lot of book reviews, but you’ll also have noticed that I offer blogging tips and tricks and how-tos too that I’ve learned from my time blogging over the past few months.
So why not offer people the chance to ask you any questions they want? This could be via a video call, a telephone call or even just via an exclusive WhatsApp chat or something. Be creative in the way you offer this and also make sure it’s something you KNOW people want. A lot of my social following are book-based so I’d likely not get the same response for this. But if your following are those looking for financial advice or for car-buying tips or something, you could offer a free one-to-one advice session.
Branded items/Own product giveaways – FREE
If you’re someone who has an established shop on your website, offering people the chance to win your merchandise is a win/win as it comes at no extra cost to you and works as a free promotion to you as well. Using the usual rules above, offer them a chance to win one of your personally designed bookmarks or t-shirts and if they’re a big enough fan, they’ll likely enter loads of times. Wondering how to set up a shop on your blog to offer products? Check out my article on Guide to setting up a Shop on your Blog
CHEAP GIVEAWAYS
Amazon wishlist purchase – around £10/$10
This is a giveaway style I have experience with. What you’re offering people here is essentially the chance to get some sort of free item. If you offer people the chance to buy something off of their wishlist, you can choose what you buy and you can set a limit too.
This worked great for me as most of my followers are book-lovers, so their Amazon wishlists were filled with books, so I was essentially offering to buy them a book or two with the £10/$10 that I was offering which if you’re just being asked to tag some mates, follow me and share the post to your story is a really easy way to get a free book.
A voucher for a specific place – £10/$10 to £30/$30
What’s your social media/blogging niche? Why do your followers follow you? Is it the fantastic flower arrangements you make? Is it the book reviews you do? Is it the coffee-drinking expertise you offer? Either way, there’s somewhere that you can likely buy a voucher for that your followers would love.
For example, buy them a voucher for a garden centre or buy them a voucher for a book shop or buy them a voucher for a coffee company. The other bonus to this is that if you’re looking to find more followers within your niche, this is a great way to show them your content. If your followers share your coffee voucher, they’ll know you’re a coffee lover and so follow you for the long run.
A voucher of their choice up to a certain amount – £10/$10 to £30/$30
Very similar to the previous option but possibly for those accounts/bloggers who don’t have quite a niche background. This is a similar offer to the Amazon Wishlist suggestion too in that you’re limiting the amount of money you’re offering but also offering them the chance to actually choose where they want the voucher bought from.
The advantage here is that if you’re saying it needs to be a voucher, you can simply buy the voucher and send them whatever code is necessary. If you offer to buy them a product from a website, there’s the commotion of needing to get their address and such which is always a little risky. (Amazon wishlists are great as you’re on the other person’s wishlist so it selects their address without showing you it.)
Summary
Above are just some of the ways you can give something back to your followers without spending a vast amount of money. As mentioned, gaining a bigger social media following can be a make or break for your blog – you want people to see your content and in this day and age, there’s no better way to ensure this than with social media.
Offer them some of the great options above and you’re sure to spread your brand and the social following should come with it.
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