Hello everybody and welcome back to my channel.
In today's video, I'm going to be talking about some shady Instagram giveaway practices
that I have seen time and time and time again.
So if you want to know what these are so you can avoid doing them on your Instagram giveaways,
then keep on watching.
So the majority of time a company is doing a giveaway, it's because they want more followers.
They're hoping at the end of the giveaway they have 500, 1,000, 2,000 more followers.
And they're really stuck on this old outdated notion that more followers will somehow lead
to more sales.
But with the Instagram algorithm and how everything has changed, that's really, really not true
anymore.
I actually recorded a video all about the dark side of Instagram giveaways, and you
can check that out right here.
But the reason why companies end up doing these shady practices is because they want
to make sure that they keep all of the followers that they got for the giveaway.
It is very, very common for people to do a giveaway, and most of the time you have to
follow the account, and then to unfollow right away.
So all of these shady practices are usually around how they can prevent you from unfollowing
them.
So let's jump into shady practice number one is not even announcing a winner at all, just
putting giveaway clothes and then DMing the winner directly.
Technically you did notify the winner.
That's fine, but still shady.
People want closure on a contest, and you're not giving them this by just saying giveaway
clothes.
Now giveaway clothes doesn't necessarily mean that the giveaway has been picked or announced
yet.
So people will see that, and they'll continue to follow you because they're hoping that
within the next few days the winner will be announced and it will be them.
The next one goes right along with that and not actually announcing that the giveaway
is closed, just leaving that post up there with no winner, no giveaway clothes, just
forever.
Okay?
Not cool.
Now next shady practice, which is announcing the winner only in the stories.
So the reason they do that is because they know that as soon as they announced the winner,
people will say, "Oh, I'm not the winner," and they're going to unfollow because they
don't care about your account, right?
And they know that, "Okay, I have to announce the winner, at least if I'm somewhat not shady.
And so if I do it in the story, then it will only be there for 24 hours and then it will
go away."
After 24 hours, that story is completely gone, and no one will be able to figure out who
the winner is.
People will go back to your post, and they will check and check and check to see, "Did
I win?
Did I win?
Did I win?"
And by not having it posted anywhere, that's just going to leave a bad taste in people's
mouth.
Now companies do this because they're really banking on the fact that you won't see their
post.
And then that post will go away, and you'll still follow them.
And then for the next little bit, and hopefully forever, you will continue to see their posts
and be front of mind, right?
And unfortunately a lot of people do that, and they enter so many contents that they
just forget about all the contests they follow.
So they're following all these random accounts they really don't care about.
All right.
Shady practice number four is completely changing the post to be something not about the giveaway
at all.
So let's say you posted a picture, and it had all these details about the giveaway.
And then when the giveaway is over, you just change the caption to be something super generic.
So that way when people go back to that, there's nothing there about the giveaway.
I think this is super shady and it's not transparent, and I am not a fan.
Tip number five, even worse than changing the caption of the post, is just deleting
the post altogether.
Say, "Oh, the winner was announced.
The winner was picked, so this doesn't exist.
I don't want it to clutter up my feed."
I've actually DMed people, saying, "Hey, was the winner selected?
Where's the post?"
And they'll respond and will say, "Oh, it's just my practice that I delete my giveaway
posts after I've selected a winner."
And I'm like, "That's shady."
I'm going to say shady a million times in this video.
Come on guys, not cool.
And you know what?
I have a less positive perception of that brand as a result.
Guys, you want people to have the best perception of your brand possible.
So when you do shady things like this, what are you expecting?
These are typically new people who are coming and experiencing your brand for the first
time, and then you engage in all of these shady practices.
And I'm like, "Eww, why would I want to follow you at that point?
No."
All right.
The next shady practice is removing all of the accounts that you had to follow in the
first place.
So I typically see this on those group giveaways where three to ten influencers will get together,
and they'll do some sort of really big prize.
And at the end of it, what they'll all do on the account, if they haven't already deleted
the post, they will just delete all of the tags of the people that you were supposed
to follow.
It makes it very difficult for you to unfollow them at that point because the majority of
time you just click, click, click, followed all these accounts, and you don't actually
remember who you followed.
And if you go to your following section of Instagram, it doesn't actually make it chronologically,
where you can just unfollow your most recent accounts.
And so it's actually very difficult to remember who the heck did I follow for this account.
So then you'll start seeing these posts, and you may not even remember that you followed
them initially for a giveaway.
That's what they're hoping.
So I actually will do, for these types of giveaways, is I will take a screenshot of
the posts.
And just in case they do some shady behavior, which guys it happens a lot more than you
think, then I could just go back and I have access to the names.
But even then, I still have to manually type them in, and that's annoying.
And it's just like, "Why did I do this?
Why did I follow these accounts?"
All right.
So I already talked about not announcing a winner, but even shadier is not picking a
winner.
Just saying giveaway clothes and not actually picking a winner, not DMing a winner, and
just having all these new followers as a result.
My next shady tactic goes along with this, and it's not sending out the prize.
So picking a winner, but just never getting around to sending the prize.
I have heard so many horror stories of this happening all the time, making me think that
there never actually was a prize to begin with.
And people get really frustrated, and they will message that person over and over and
over again.
But there's really nothing they could do at that point because what are they going to
do, sue them?
So before I go rapid fire, if you have seen some of these first shady tactics, let me
know in the comments below because I want to see what's the most common that's happening
here.
All right.
Next shade tactic is making it seem like it's a random winner when it's really not.
You end up just picking a friend or a family member or whoever you happen to like.
Maybe you pick a winner because they have a lot of followers.
Shady.
I have no way of proving this, but sometimes you just have a feeling.
Again there's really no way to prove this, but it's shady and don't do it.
Next shady practice is not following your own rules in picking a winner.
For example, picking a winner that isn't actually following you or picking a winner who didn't
follow all of the steps.
Just at the end of the contest being like, "Oh, I'm going to throw these into a random
number generator and pick a winner," and then not verifying that the winner actually did
those things.
Kind of shady.
Maybe that's just being lazy, nonetheless shady.
How many times can I say shady in this video?
If you have been counting, let me know in the comments below what your count is.
I'm interested.
It's probably in the hundreds at this point.
All right.
My very last one is not having clear criteria for entering and picking a winner.
So actually I've seen a wide variety of examples of this.
One I've seen where they say, "Oh, you need to like, comment, and follow, and extra entries
if you share."
And then they'll put in parentheses, "Hint, I pay really close attention to these.
Winky face."
And so I'm sitting here, and I'm like, "So is sharing the post to your story required,
or is it an extra entry?
Are you picking someone who only shares because you pay really close attention to these?"
What does that even mean?
That is unclear, and that is not fair because sharing is a little harder of a step.
People will easily do those other things, but sharing to their stories...
Maybe I don't want to share this to my stories, whatever.
And so by saying that I don't even know.
So is sharing required or not?
I don't like it.
Now really what all this comes down to is transparency in your giveaways.
The more transparent, open, honest you are about what's going on, what are the rules,
how you pick the winner the more trust your audience will have with you, and that's what
you want.
And especially if you're doing a giveaway and you're getting new followers, you really
want them to have a positive feeling about you instead of thinking that you're this super
shady company that only cares about followers.
So please, please, please, do not do these shady tactics.
Please, just don't.
I beg you.
Please, don't do it.
All right guys, if you have seen these shady tactics before in other giveaways, let me
know in the comments below.
I'm interested to see what are the most common.
And also if there's other ones that I didn't even mention here, let me know those below
as well.
Also be sure to like this video if you found it helpful, and be sure to subscribe for more
videos where I talk about how to use social media to get more clients for your business.
So with that, thank you for watching, and I'll see you next time.