How to Run a YouTube Giveaway

For many YouTubers, particularly those that have little resources to use on running adverts, one of the most critical challenges they face is how to grow their YouTube followers.

While YouTube is definitely not short of the audience with over 2.70 billion active users, it has been proven that grasping hold of loyal followers on YouTube is a hard nut to crack for many channels.

There are various ways to grow channels; however, if you are looking for a smart, cost-effective, and highly efficient way to increase the number of your subscribers, giveaway might be your most viable option.

Remember the bucket ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, PewDiePie contest, Quad Squad Viral Video captioned “Funniest Video of All Time), and several other contests that generated a massive online following.

Why you should consider a YouTube Contest to Grow your Channel

If you are still contemplating whether running a YouTube contest is a waste of time, here are some reasons why you need to employ this strategy to increase your subscribers' list.

Readymade Audience

Presently, YouTube rank as the second largest search engine in the world and doubles as the third most visited site globally only after Google and Facebook. With over 2.7 billion monthly logged in users, you can never run out of the audience. This may be the primary reason why running a contest may be ideal for your channel and your business as a whole.

Engagement with a larger audience

Due to demographics and personal preferences, it’s not possible to get everyone to have an interest in your brand. However, the giveaway is a sure way to captivate larger audience attention and one of the best ways to grow channels even if they are not going to participate in your contest. Some will only be interested in watching the entries on the sideline and participate in voting. This form of engagement will help you to build your brand presence and indirectly contribute to the growth of your followers.

Increasing your Site or Social Media Traffic

While the chief aim of creating a YouTube contest is to grow your subscriber list, it also helps in generating traffic to your website and social media networks. For instance, you can encourage participant to follow social media platform or subscribe to your email list as additional ways to increase their chances of winning the contest.

Source of User-Generated Content

Did you know? No matter how valuable your brand is, other consumers’ opinions of your brand have more weight than the value you have built for your brand over time. Thus, having contestants creating their videos as part of the challenge or enabling contest winners to upload “thank you” video will help you create user-generated content which you can use as part of your content marketing strategy. Furthermore, videos as such will help to boost your social proof, and thus increase your brand loyalty.

4 Best YouTube Giveaway Ideas to Adopt

There are several contest ideas you can use for your YouTube giveaway. Notable ones include:

1. Subscribe to Win

This is one of the oldest forms of contests. It’s simply asking your viewers to subscribe to your channel for a chance to win a giveaway. However, “subscribe to win” contest is tricky because since you are randomly picking winners, a lot of participants may be skeptical about the fairness of the competition.

2. Caption Contest

You might think caption contest is limited to Facebook and Instagram alone; it is very effective for growing YouTube channels subscriber as well. You should encourage your viewers to drop a caption in the form of a comment. Usually, the most liked captions always win, but if you have other methods of selecting a winner, be smart to inform the participants earlier.

3. Upload a Video Contest

If you are selling a product, you can instruct the participants to upload a video where they are using your product for the intended purposes. The audience will determine who wins through voting.

4. Challenge Contest

From Renetto’s challenge of combining Mentos with Coca Cola to ALS Ice bucket, YouTube Contest Challenge has been one of the most used strategies. You only need to tap into your creativity to set up a challenge that will interest many viewers. However, you must find a way to incorporate your products or services as part of the challenge if you are a brand.

Strategies for Running a Successful YouTube Contest

Set the right goals

Every action comes with an objective. You should be clear and concise with what you want to achieve with your YouTube contest. Some of the possible goals include generating leads, driving sales, obtaining consumer data, and customer retention. Don’t forget that the ultimate goal is to grow your audience or subscribers’ list.

Obey YouTube contest guidelines and policies

YouTube has a lot of guidelines and policies for contests that you must respect.

Make Use of relevant prizes

YouTube contest is somewhat related to a bait. For instance, if your brand focuses on helping older citizen in saving towards retirement, it will be a total waste of time and effort using a winning a video game as an incentive. You must understand your audience; what do they care for? Which content generates more engagement with them? And what is their demographics? Considering all these answers will help you to pick a relevant prize.

Also, your prize must be something that complements the products or services you offer.

Maximize the benefits of social reach

Although the primary focus of the YouTube contest is growing your channel subscribers. However, you can take advantage of the contest to grow your other social media platforms too. For instance, in a case where your contest involves having participant upload their video, you can motivate them to share on their Facebook and Instagram as well, and they need to follow you to do that. However, you must be ready to provide extra incentive to achieve that. It could be doubling their point or increasing their likelihood of winning if posted on other social networks.

Use the right tool for your YouTube giveaway

The thought of setting up a YouTube contest looks a lot overwhelming. You have a lot of analytics to perform, and also since modern contests are cross-platform, it might be too tiring, and even almost impossible to successfully run a contest without a giveaway app.

Socialman is one of the leading apps for hosting a YouTube giveaway. It allows you to monitor all the metrics, and at the same time saves you time while ensuring efficiency. Another plus is that you can use it across different platforms at the same time.

Conclusion

YouTube giveaway is a tested and proven method to grow your channel, with the right tools in your possession and following the best strategies, you will be surprised at the fantastic results you can derive!