Hello everybody and welcome back to my channel. In today's video,
I'm going to be talking about the dark side of Instagram giveaways. Are they really worth it
for your brand and your account? If you want to know, keep on watching.
I have done a lot of videos on Instagram giveaways because Instagram giveaways are so popular,
actually my most popular video at this point is how to win Instagram giveaways. That's from
the consumer side, really no risk by entering a giveaway. However, for an account or a brand
or an influencer there can be a ton of negatives from running an Instagram giveaway. I'm actually
kind of torn because Instagram giveaways can actually be really bad for your account
and so I've done all these other videos on best practices and the different types of giveaways.
I put those out there because people want to know the information and I want them to know
all the facts. I even have a video that's Shady Instagram Giveaway Practices and How You Can
Avoid Those. They're just so popular, accounts are going to want to do giveaways. However,
the question is, should you even be doing them at all? One thing that I
don't think a lot of people really know is how the Instagram algorithm works.
Instagram, if you don't know, they changed their algorithm a few years ago. Where before
it was chronological, you would see everyone that you followed in chronological order
of when it was posted. Instagram didn't like that because they want engagement,
they want you to see the best posts possible, which means people like it, they're commenting,
they're saving it, they're sharing it, they're sharing their stories, whatever. Those are now
the metrics that Instagram uses, whether they are going to show you a post in your feed or not.
If you have crappy content and no one's engaging with it, then Instagram is going to bury that in
the algorithm and not that many people are going to see it. That's why you see accounts with
hundreds of thousands of followers and they have 500 likes on a photo, that's not good,
that is not good engagement, and they have zero comments. That's either something
shady is going on, like they're using bots or they had used bots,
and I'm sorry but that doesn't work anymore, Instagram sees through that.
Even though doing an Instagram giveaway isn't necessarily using a bot, what it is doing is
it's manufacturing increased engagement for a short period of time on a very specific post.
Instagram, they don't know the difference and so they'll see all of this engagement,
tons of follows, tons of shares, tons of likes, tons of comments,
and so they'll start promoting your account a little bit more. Once the contest period is over,
people are going to unfollow you. That's the facts of an Instagram giveaway, is people want to win,
they want the prize, they don't care about you, that is plain and simple, that is true.
When I follow a contest, anyone who's ever followed any contest, majority of
time they're doing it because they hope and want to win. When the contest period is over,
what majority of people do, they unfollow, they disengage. Then you are going to be hurt by
the Instagram algorithm because Instagram is going to use that as an indicator that
maybe this isn't that great of account, I'm not going to show it to as many people. Yes,
you have those vanity metrics where you have so many followers but because the
engagement is now low, Instagram's like, "Okay, I guess that's not very great."
I see this, again, like I said, so many times where you see these accounts and they run all
of these giveaways and they get all of these followers but the followers don't
care about them. That's why I just be so careful in running an Instagram giveaway.
Think about why do I want to run the giveaway? If it's to get more followers, then we need to
stop this conversation right now and talk about followers. I can do a whole other video on why
followers don't matter and numbers don't matter. I know we all think they do. It's like, "Well,
I want 10,000 so I can get swipe up." I totally get it but if by doing all of these things,
like doing giveaways and doing bots, if they hurt you in such a way that now
instead of 200 people seeing your posts only 50 people are seeing your posts and liking it,
what you lost was way more than what you gained in a few extra followers.
It sucks because giveaways are so prominent on Instagram that people don't like to hear this
and I don't think people are talking about it. I think people are just getting so caught up in
the cycle of I see this person doing giveaway, they're doing giveaway, they're doing giveaway,
they're doing giveaway, that people think that they have to do a giveaway to be seen.
Really, it has to go back to what is the purpose that you're on Instagram. Hopefully,
it's so you can get more exposure for your business or you can get more sales,
get more revenue, get more business, not more followers. It's not about the
followers because now in the new world of Instagram, not all your followers,
it's not a one-to-one ratio of who's seeing your post. It's not like, "Well,
if I get more followers then it's that much more percentage of people who will be seeing my post."
It doesn't work that way anymore so you could have an account with a thousand followers and
if they're all super engaged and into your content and commenting all the time, that is
significantly better than having 50,000 or 100,000 followers where only .1% of them even care.
This is why I recommend that if you are going to do a giveaway on Instagram,
that the entry is something that's off Instagram. I know that's hard because
it's an increased barrier to entry and not as many people are going to do it, but if
you have them click on your link instead, that's good, Instagram likes that. It's not fabricating
this fake engagement for a short period of time that ultimately is going to hurt you.
The problem with giveaways also is that I feel that people feel that they have to do
this giveaway cycle. People want free things, they only came to me for free things. You had
trained your audience to do free. I give away free things. It was one time and then I did
another one so those people stuck around because they're hoping for another one and another one
because you know what happened? People only care about my giveaway posts so I'm going to do more
giveaway posts because my regular posts no one cares about and they're not engaging.
It's because the type of people you are trying to attract to your brand are people who like
free things so they're never going to buy your stuff unless, I don't know, a handful of them
actually do. I'm not totally bashing on giveaways. Obviously, I have tons of videos on how to best
set yourself up for successful giveaways. What I am saying is that you attract what you're putting
out there. You're putting out free, free, free, come to me for free, and so you're
going to have to continue to give away free stuff in order to keep those people around and engaged.
I do see this happen with companies, is where it seems like every other week they
are giving away free $50 shop credit or this or that. They're constantly doing
giveaways because they don't want to lose the people that they have. Okay,
so but here's the big caveat. I'm not saying the giveaways don't work because if they
didn't work people would stop doing them. I do believe that if you run your giveaway in
the right way you can attract the ideal client for you who will stick around.
Yes, by giving away something free, other people will see your content and hopefully,
again, if you do it in the right way, your Instagram page is set up in the right way,
they will invest in you and eventually purchase. Again, Instagram giveaways, they're great,
they're fun, they're awesome, consumers love them, but they may not be the best thing for your brand,
especially if you're new because you are going to attract crap and hurt your account, basically,
forever because you're only going to have crap followers that only wanted you for free stuff.
Instagram giveaways can be fantastic as a way to think people who are already following you ... We
hit 10,000, we hit a big milestone, we opened a new location, whatever. Those can be really
great things to give back to your existing customer base. My favorite type of giveaway,
which I talk about in my types of Instagram giveaways, is where you get them to subscribe
to your email list. You have a link in your bio where they don't have to do anything, they don't
even have to engage or like or comment on the post. It's like, "Hey, if you want to enter,
just do this," and then leave a comment below with whatever your email is. Which,
I don't like that because I don't like people having to publicly put their information out
there like an email address, that's not cool so there's different ways to do that.
I do like, "Hey, anyone who goes and sign-ups on my email list, anyone who signs up within
the next 48 hours using this link." You can track that yourself, which is great,
and then pick a winner from there. You can have them go to a form where they can fill
out whatever. I like that, you just need to be very, very careful. Don't go in thinking that,
"Hey, I'm running an Instagram giveaway, I'm going to get all of these followers and things
are going to be great. I'm going to have so many followers and my business is going to explode."
If you're going in thinking that, please, please, please re-evaluate why you are doing that contest
and how you are doing it. Again, Instagram giveaways, not bad but there is a dark side
to Instagram giveaways that I don't think people are talking about. Again, it can really plummet
your engagement and then suddenly no one is seeing your post or you feel you have to get into that
giveaway loop where you're constantly having to do giveaways in order to keep people engaged.
Yeah, that is what I have, that is the dark side of Instagram giveaways. Again,
I really like Instagram giveaways but they need to be done in the right way,
and have the right goals, and be done in a way that doesn't hurt your account but rather helps
your account and your business. The worst thing that can happen is you do a giveaway,
you give away a big prize, and then things are worse than when they started.
Anyways, let me know in the comments below what are your thoughts on Instagram giveaways for
your business? If you have run a giveaway, have you experienced this situation where
you actually have worse engagement? Yeah, what happened when you ran a giveaway? Tell
me your success stories and tell me your failures. I'm super interested to hear,
let's keep the conversation going. If you found this video interesting and you liked it, well,
do just that, give it a like and be sure to subscribe for more videos that teach you how to
get more business using social media. With that, that's all I have and I'll see you next time.