Run a giveaway that grows your list, not just your follower count

The giveaway itself is always fine. It is the fortnight afterwards that hurts. You gained 900 followers in four days, announced a winner, and then watched the number slide back down while your reach on ordinary posts got worse rather than better. Nothing went wrong, exactly. You simply ran a competition whose only prize for you was a number that leaves, and you have no way to contact any of the people who came.

Why the standard giveaway underdelivers

Follow, like, tag two friends. It is efficient at generating the behaviour it asks for and almost nothing else. The tagged friends were tagged because they exist, not because they are interested. The follows are reversible and often reversed. And the entire audience gained is held inside a platform that will decide, on your behalf, how many of them ever see you again.

The genuinely hard part is that giveaways attract a specific type of participant who is very good at them. There are people who enter dozens a week, and they are indistinguishable from real prospects until you look at what happens next: no opens, no clicks, no purchases, ever. You cannot filter them out at entry. What you can do is make the prize so specific to your niche that entering is only appealing to somebody who genuinely wants the thing.

The second problem is that a giveaway is a spike, and spikes distort. A week of unusually high engagement followed by a month of unusually low engagement can leave you worse off than if you had done nothing, and it makes your ordinary numbers unreadable for weeks. Plan for what happens after the winner is announced, not just for the announcement.

Two ways to take an entry

The prize, the poster and the excitement are identical. Only the entry mechanism changes, and it changes what you own afterwards.

How to run it

Two weeks of run-up, one week of entries, one announcement. The setup takes about an hour with a $0 product doing the entry handling.

1. 1Pick a prize your audience wants and a stranger does not. Your own coaching, a year of your membership, a bundle of your work, or a piece of kit that is only useful to someone in your niche. Never a generic gift card.
2. 2Create a product, set the price to $0, and name it as the entry: what the prize is, and when entries close.
3. 3Attach something to the $0 product so everybody who enters gets a real file immediately. This is what turns losing entrants into subscribers who do not resent you.
4. 4Add one order-form question — a short one, relevant to the prize. It gives you something to write about later and tells you who is serious.
5. 5Write the rules in the product description in plain language: who can enter, when it closes, how the winner is picked, when they will be told.
6. 6Promote the product link, not a comment mechanic. Stories, posts, your existing list, your community.
7. 7Close entries on the stated date. Pick the winner, tell them, and tell everybody else in the same message.
8. 8In the same message, point the non-winners at something specific and small. They just gave you an email address; give them a reason to be glad.

A realistic look at the numbers

Say you give away three months of your coaching, worth several hundred pounds, and 400 people enter over a week. Under the old mechanic you would have gained a follower spike and one winner's DM. Under this one you have 400 people in your customer list, each with a claimed free file and an answer to your question sitting beside their name.

Some of those 400 are competition hunters and will do nothing ever again. Some will unsubscribe the moment you email them, which is fine and healthy. What is left is a group of people who wanted three months of coaching enough to enter for it — which is a very useful thing to know about somebody when you are deciding who to tell about your next intake. No promises about conversion, and a first giveaway rarely pays for itself immediately. But 400 named people beats 900 followers who leave.

The mistake most people make

The mistake is choosing a prize with broad appeal. An iPad, a hamper, a big gift card — chosen precisely because everyone wants one. That is the flaw, not the feature. A prize everyone wants attracts everyone, and everyone is not your audience. You end up paying real money to collect a list of people whose only common characteristic is that they like free iPads. Give away something that is only valuable to somebody who cares about your subject, even if that means fewer entries. Four hundred people who wanted your coaching are worth more than four thousand who wanted a tablet.

Run the giveaway. They are good fun and they do bring new people in. Just change the door they come through, so that when the excitement is over you are left holding something more durable than a chart that is already falling. If you have not got a page to take entries on yet, look at the plans — the free one covers everything this article describes.