New Update: Boost Social Proof with Reviews & Automation
Introducing RafflePress's new leave-a-review giveaway actions. Boost customer engagement and build trust effortlessly by incentivizing reviews in WordPress.
New Update: Boost Social Proof with Reviews & Automation
Stacey Corrin
Stacey Corrin
John Turner
John Turner
To run a Facebook giveaway, decide your goal, choose a prize, and write clear entry rules that follow Facebook’s promotion policies. Then post your giveaway or use a contest tool to collect entries, track results, pick a winner, and share the outcome.
When I first tried one, I thought posting a prize and waiting for likes would be enough. A few people entered, but it didn’t grow my audience or lead to more sales.
That’s when I learned a successful Facebook giveaway needs more than a post. You need a simple plan that builds real engagement and keeps people interested.
In this guide, I’ll walk you through the exact steps I use now, from setup and promotion to choosing a winner, so you can run a Facebook giveaway that actually works.
Quick steps to run a Facebook giveaway:
Despite my initial stumble with Facebook giveaways, I didn’t give up. Instead, I learned from my mistakes and discovered why they can actually be ideal for business growth when done right.
A well-planned Facebook giveaway can help you:
Many readers ask, “What is the best way to conduct a Facebook contest?” The answer lies in the list above: clear goals, genuine engagement, and capturing leads rather than just vanity metrics.
Here’s what makes Facebook particularly interesting for giveaways: nearly 3 billion people use it monthly worldwide, and about 70% of American adults are active on the platform (according to recent Meta and Pew Research Center data). That’s a lot of potential customers you could reach.
But here’s the thing I learned the hard way: it’s not about reaching everyone, it’s about reaching the right people who might actually buy from you. Throughout this guide, I’ll share the exact steps I now use to make sure giveaways bring in real business results, not just vanity metrics.
Consider what you want to achieve with your giveaway. According to CoSchedule, marketers who set goals are 376% more likely to report success. A clear goal will guide your strategy.
Some potential giveaway goals could be:
Once you’ve decided on your giveaway goal, the next step is to determine what prize you’ll give to your winner.
Select a prize that aligns with your giveaway goal. For example, if you’re highlighting a new product, you could give one away to your audience, as Soak & Sleep did with the example below.
Alternatively, you could offer the lucky contest winner a bundle of goodies based on the time of year or your giveaway theme (more on that coming up).
You should also tailor your prize to your target audience to make your giveaway exciting. Otherwise, users won’t find it enticing enough to enter.
Here’s how to tailor a prize to really excite your target audience:
For even more prize ideas, check out this article.
Expert Tip
“At WPBeginner, we often give away free licenses of WordPress plugins and themes to our winners. One of our partner companies, WPForms, runs monthly giveaways of cool gadgets such as MacBooks.
Because our 14th birthday was a big celebration, we offered a big prize: premium plugins worth $50,000. On top of that, we offered a 1-1 mentorship call with WPBeginner founder, Syed Balkhi.”
WPBeginner – Tips to Run a Successful Giveaway Like WPBeginner
Your giveaway prize should be exciting to your target audience. Relevance beats flashiness every time.
A theme can make your giveaway more engaging. Consider tying it to a season (like Christmas or summer) or an interest related to your brand.
Paper Christmas offers a stationery bundle for the best festive line drawing entry in this Facebook giveaway example. Isn’t that creative?
Here are some trending giveaway themes you can try:
Have fun coming up with your theme. The more fun you have, the more fun your audience will have entering.
Learn how to run a Facebook photo contest here. You can also check out these inspiring Facebook giveaway ideas.
Decide how people will enter and choose methods that support your goal. For example, to grow your Facebook page, ask people to visit your page. To increase newsletter signups, require email entry.
Keep the entry process simple and choose methods that match what you want to accomplish, such as:
It’s just as important to keep the entry process easy. If it’s too difficult to enter, you could deter people from taking part.
I cannot stress this enough: do not make up your rules as you go. Clear contest rules are the only thing standing between you and a legal headache, or violating Facebook’s promotion policies.
Early on, I simply wrote “Rules in comments” on my posts. I quickly learned that wasn’t enough to protect my business.
To keep your giveaway safe and fair, you must include specific details. Here is the checklist I use for every contest I run:
Expert Tip
Don’t clutter your Facebook post caption with paragraphs of legal text. It looks messy and lowers engagement.
Instead, I create a dedicated “Rules” page on my website. Then, I add a simple line in the contest post: “For full official rules, click here: [Link].” This keeps your post clean while ensuring you are fully compliant.
Running a contest directly on your timeline can be messy. It is hard to track entries fairly without a dedicated tool.
I recommend using a plugin like RafflePress to automate the process. This keeps your data safe and makes picking a winner fair.
I’ve found that the easiest way to run a Facebook giveaway is with a giveaway tool. They make it easier to set everything up, manage entries, and even draw winners when the contest is over.
Some popular options include Gleam, Rafflecopter, and Wishpond. But, personally, I like setting things up on my WordPress website. This allows me to send valuable giveaway traffic to it while also growing my Facebook page.
For that reason, I use RafflePress, a popular WordPress giveaway plugin.
It makes running any type of giveaway easy and there’s no need to wrestle with code. Just choose a Facebook giveaway template, enter your prize details and requirements, and you’re up and running.
More importantly, RafflePress has 1-click giveaway actions for Facebook built right in. You can require users to:
I think connecting your giveaway to your WordPress site is the best way to do a giveaway on Facebook, and RafflePress simplifies the process.
To see how I do it, take a look at the video below:
Alternatively, you can follow my written steps for using RafflePress to run an online contest.
Using a tool like RafflePress helps you run your Facebook giveaway smoothly, track entries, and grow your audience from your own website.
There are a few ways you can publish your giveaway:
I think the smart move is to publish your giveaway on a Landing Page. This way, you can easily link to it in your initial Facebook post, and all that traffic will go to your website and your Facebook page.
Here’s how to do it.
From your RafflePress giveaway editor, click Publish. You’ll then see a new page with 3 options. Click the Giveaway Landing Page option. Then, select the link labeled click here to configure your permalink.
Now, create the custom web address for your giveaway page. Click Save when you are finished.
Pasting the URL you just created into your browser will show you the landing page of your giveaway. You can share this link with people so they can enter your contest.
Now all you need to do is create an eye-catching Facebook post with the URL for your giveaway landing page.
Here’s a great example from SeedProd, who used the landing page option for their Black Friday contest on Facebook. You can see SeedProd’s giveaway results in this case study.
A good description, an excellent image, and a link to your landing page are all you need.
Publishing your Facebook giveaway on a landing page gives you more control and makes promotion much easier.
You can’t just sit around and wait for people to enter your contest. Instead, start promoting your contest aggressively to help spread the word.
Don’t ignore email. Studies by McKinsey show that email marketing is up to 40x more effective at acquiring new customers than social media alone.
A good contest marketing strategy will help your Facebook giveaway or contest to go viral, so you can grow your audience and generate as many leads as possible.
Here are my top ways to advertise your giveaway on Facebook:
You might also wonder, “Can you use Facebook ads to promote a Giveaway?” The answer is yes. Paid ads allow you to target specific demographics to boost reach quickly.
Start promoting your contest weeks before it goes live to get tons of traffic and entries on day 1.
After all the work that went into creating, publishing, and promoting your contest, the time will eventually come to announce the winner.
So, for a Facebook contest, how to pick winners? RafflePress has a super-easy way to do this with the automatic random winner generator. You can learn all about drawing winners in RafflePress here.
Using this option takes the pain out of selecting a winner yourself manually. Even better, there’s a link you can click to email the winner right away.
After announcing your winner, make sure you follow up to keep participants engaged and nurture them into loyal customers.
For example, you can create a celebratory announcement thanking everyone for participating. Share photos or videos of the winner receiving the prize (with permission, of course).
Here’s an example from MCTV who shared winner photos on X. We love how they included their branded hashtags to improve their reach.
Similarly, you could reward everyone who entered with a special discount code, a free trial, or early access to a new product. This incentivizes them to explore your offerings further and potentially turn them into paying customers.
After your giveaway ends, you’ll want to look at how well it performed. This helps you make your next contest even better.
This data also helps answer the question, “How efficient are giveaways on Facebook and Instagram?”
Look for an engagement rate between 1-3.5%. This is significantly higher than the average Facebook post engagement rate of 0.06%, proving the efficiency of contests.
Here are three main ways to check your results:
1. Google Analytics Track how many people:
If you need help getting this set up, you can see my guide on how to add Google Analytics to WordPress.
2. Contest Platform Reports Most contest tools show you:
For instance, with RafflePress’s Entries Report, you can see which entry actions resonated most with your users so you know what to use in future giveaways.
3. Social Media Stats Check your social media analytics to see:
And there you have it!
You’ve successfully learned how to run a Facebook contest to increase likes and engagement with hardly any effort. Now, you can enjoy engaging with all the new people who are now part of your audience.
You may also find the following guides helpful:
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This was very helpful.