Instagram is becoming an increasingly challenging platform for new brands to break into.
From ever-evolving algorithms to saturated content across the board, how do you increase engagement? For one, it is important for a new brand to consider the right digital strategies for long term success. Once this baseline is set and you have a strong social media marketing strategy in place, you may look into influencer partnerships. This word-of-mouth strategy can certainly provide measurable results but only if brands strategically plan their choice of influencers and partnerships.
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Giveaways are another way to create excitement, engagement and brand awareness. Two weeks ago, TV personality star Molly-Mae Hague broke the internet in her latest giveaway. Announced on Instagram, followers had the chance of winning £8000 worth of products. The winner has since been announced. But, how successful did this prove to be? Let’s take a look at the results and what we can learn from them.
Molly-Mae’s Instagram giveaway
Molly-Mae Hague’s 4.8 million follower Instagram success can be thanked to her presence on the British reality TV show, Love Island. The show also helped grow her presence on her YouTube platform. Here, she gives her subscribers an insight into her daily life through vlogs, relationship and outfit videos. The channel, which currently has a total of 1.32 million subscribers also features brand sponsorships. Gaining an average 500,000 likes per Instagram post, Molly-Mae has also used her influence to start her own tanning brand, ‘Filter by Molly-Mae’. The brand features its own website, Twitter and Instagram pages.
Within the giveaway, Molly-Mae offered £8000 worth of gifts as a gratitude in reaching 1 million subscribers. Gifts included Louis Vuitton luggages, Apple products and a years supply of Filter products. To enter, users had to like her post, tag a friend, subscribe to her Youtube channel, follow both her personal and brand account, and share the post to their stories. The more users tagged a friend, the more of a chance they had to win. Importantly, Molly-Mae’s messaging felt organic and authentic from embedding a heartfelt message. Adding a deadline also added a sense of urgency. Followers had just eleven days to enter.
However, one may argue against this strategy. Surely new organic followers will unfollow after the announcement of the winner? But, for Molly-Mae, the target lays elsewhere; at her existing followers on her personal profile. This makes sense considering her target demographic for her tanning brand remains the same as her personal brand. Therefore, promoting them to follow her other accounts would have a positive outcome.
Results
The tactic proved to be successful, with over 2 million comments and a substantial upsurge of followers and subscribers.
As we can see from the figures above, Molly-Mae’s tanning brand achieved the biggest boost in Instagram followers, gaining an astonishing 550,000 new follows! There was also an increase of 210,000 new Instagram followers on her personal account, and 270,000 new Youtube subscribers.
Cross-platform
Additionally, Molly-Mae’s giveaway generated numerous conversations and memes on Twitter. Cross-promoting on platforms is certainly a great technique to broaden exposure. The giveaway garnered a wide range of diverse users from Twitter, onto Instagram. Molly-Mae even got involved in the memes herself. This whole buzz resulted in her reaching the Twitter trending page numerous times. The giveaway message spread wider than expected.
The winner of the giveaway ended up being a small lifestyle blogger, @joycenotjoy , which was celebrated widely across Twitter. Furthermore, the winners Instagram account also resulted in an upsurge of followers. A big leap to help her within her blogging career and to a become a micro-influencer herself.
What can we learn from this?
If your brand is considering a giveaway, there are some important considerations to take into account:
- What is your ultimate goal?
Be strategic in knowing where you want to divert your traffic. - What platform should you use?
Ultimately Instagram is the popular choice. But this should be dependent on your brand and giveaway intentions. Further, be aware of what demographic you would like to attract. - What type of influencer should you select?
There are various types of influencers out there, and not doing your research can be vital. Who resonates the most with your brand? Perhaps a micro-influencer is more suitable than a mainstream celebrity. - Know the rules and laws of giveaways.
This may also be dependant on country and platform. We recommend taking a look at ASA’s guidelines. - What prize should you select?
Are there any current trends out there? What’s relevant for your brand? - What sort of messaging should you use?
Perhaps an authentic message from the influencer itself will resonate most with their followers.
Be aware your instructions are clear and be smart on what call to actions to use. - Are there any hashtags you should use?
A campaign hashtag can be useful for tracking the success of a giveaway. Engagement rates are dependent on what you do before, during and after the giveaway. Forbes suggest that…
The best engagement conversion occurs when you run ‘micro’ giveaways of your product or service on your page during and after the main giveaway.
Even so, Molly-Mae herself has teased another giveaway since.
Key takeaways
- Don’t forget to define your aims and be smart about which influencer(s) your brand should partner with.
- Don’t always go for the biggest profiles but rather who best resonates with the target users you are trying to reach.
- Check the platforms rules and regulations surrounding giveaways and contests.
- Lastly, remember a giveaway does not just end after the winner has been announced. Your engagement rates can be improved even more based on what you decide to do after.
Influencer giveaways can definitely prove to be successful if you follow the rules and are strategic in your method of approach. If you need help building a social and influencer marketing strategy don’t hesitate to get in touch with us today.
