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SEO For Boutique Owners

Engagement Giveaways: Maximizing Your Organic Reach

Have you been feeling like algorithms have gotten the best of you and you are spinning your wheels with posts that garner 0 reach?

You’re not alone, with Instagram’s announced plans for an algorithm change and new updates to Facebook’s ad policy, it seems like finding new ways to gain reach gets more difficult all the time.

Let’s go back to some basics shall we?

One of the key factors in Facebook’s algorithm is showing your posts to people who have previously interacted with your content.

So your last post only reached about 50 people or your group is getting quiet?

Well, that means it’s time to run a small engagement giveaway to reach new eyeballs so your subsequent posts reach real shoppers without having to rely on an immediate post boost.

There are three types of giveaways that you should be running at different times, each with their own unique purpose (watch for our next two blog posts on these) – but for today’s conversation, we’re talking only about engagement giveaways that exist only for the sake of generating conversation and post engagement to keep your content circulating.

These can be run either in your group or on your business page as you need them or on a consistent basis.

These are as simple as asking:

“Who’s ready for $15 boutique cash card LIKE, COMMENT, WIN Giveaway? We’ll be drawing one lucky winner on Thursday from those who like this post and tell us which new arrival is their favorite!”

Post this type of giveaway along with three to five photos of new arrivals in a collage, along with direct links to each one at the end of your post or in the comments, just in case your fans can’t wait!

You can also post without an image while also building anticipation for new arrivals by asking:

“Are you ready to get your week started off on the right foot? LIKE & COMMENT if you’re up for a $10 gift card and we’ll pick one lucky winner on Wednesday night as we launch new arrivals at 8pm – don’t miss it!”

Finally, you can use these giveaways to learn more about your fans to help you better serve and reach them.

“Ready for a $15 boutique cash giveaway? We want to hear from you – what’s your favorite time of day and day of the week to shop? Tell us in the comments and we’ll draw one lucky winner on Friday!”

The possibilities and combinations for engagement giveaways are endless as long as you keep an element of liking and commenting to gain engagement, valuable insight into your customer’s behaviors, shopping preferences, or to build relationships!

How often should you run these and how do they actually help with sales?

Consistency in small giveaways weekly can help keep a flow of customers seeing your next posts and help attract new fans to your pages or feed. You may run a weekly giveaway, or mix this giveaway type up with others you are running to keep content fresh. The more often you are running giveaways, it’s likely the more engagement you will see for two reasons. First because the engagement builds off itself in the algorithm, and second, because your fans get used to your content routines and become excited about weekly giveaways followed by new arrivals, looking forward to this weekly event.

Just make sure the next posts following your giveaways are high impact and include a clear CTA (call-to-action) with direct, trackable links. These posts will get the most reach, so use them wisely. These posts should be the category you are pushing for the week, whether it’s a Mother’s Day collection, new arrivals, a huge blow-out sale or restocks. To repeat, your following posts after a giveaway are they key reasons you want giveaways to work, so be deliberate and use direct links!

If you’re looking to boost your giveaways for a little extra reach, just remember Facebook’s text guidelines which have recently changed. This was formerly known as the 20% rule, not allowing more than 20% of images in ads to include text. Now however, you can have as much text as you like but Facebook will limit your ad’s reach based on the amount of text included. There’s always a hook right?

One last tip to be aware of.

Facebook and Instagram are constantly updating contest policies which you should be aware of. At the time of this post, requiring entrants to ‘tag’ friends or themselves is no longer acceptable, nor is it ok to require entrants to share your contest post to their own or to someone else’s timelines.

For the most accurate and full policies, read the Official Facebook Page Guidelines.

Once Instagram starts broadly implementing their new algorithm, these same types of giveaways popular on Facebook, will also be a key factor in reach. While we can’t measure this yet, we can assume that the same concepts will hold true.

Ready to start building your reach weekly?

Let us know how your engagement contests are going either on your page or in your groups by joining the conversation in our Boutique Owner’s Group. We’d love to here how it’s working!