How to Boost Your YouTube Engagement with Contest

If you’ve ever seen a video online, you’ve most definitely used YouTube. It’s a platform where people from all around the world share videos on anything and everything. However, creating videos and hoping people will watch them is not enough. As a creator (or business owner), it's critical to get people who watch your videos to interact with what you’re doing. One of the really fun ways to get more engagement is by hosting contests on your YouTube channel.

A contest is an excellent strategy to get your audience interested and intrigued about your videos. However, running a contest may appear simple, but it requires significant organization and effort. You must thoroughly understand your target audience’s preferences and ensure that your contest is appropriate for the type of videos you create.

In this article, we’ll show you how to do just that. We’ll demonstrate how to use contests to increase engagement on your YouTube channel.

What is a YouTube Giveaway Strategy?

A YouTube giveaway strategy entails creating and implementing a contest or sweepstakes on your YouTube channel to engage your audience and achieve certain goals, such as increasing your subscriber count, increasing video views, or marketing a product or service.

This strategy includes defining the goal of the giveaway, choosing the prize, establishing the rules and procedures by local laws, launching the giveaway on a reputable platform, promoting it through many media, and transparently announcing the winner. It also entails reviewing the results based on predetermined goals to assess the efficiency of the giveaway.

How to Run a YouTube Contest

Establish SMART Goals

Set SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Timely) goals for your YouTube giveaway. Do you want to increase channel subscribers, work with other YouTubers, or advertise a product? Your objectives will direct how you plan and promote your giveaway and allow you to measure its success once completed.

Ensure that your goals are specific (e.g., increase followers), quantifiable (use tools like Google Analytics), attainable (establish realistic targets), relevant to your audience (e.g., a PC game giveaway for PC players), and timely (determine the giveaway timeframe).

Understand YouTube’s Guidelines

Before you organize a giveaway, educate yourself about YouTube’s promotion regulations. YouTube’s Privacy Policy, Community Guidelines, and Terms of Service must be followed. The offer must be free to enter, and metrics such as views, likes, or subscriptions cannot be manipulated.

You should also not indicate any relationship with YouTube without its permission. You should clarify that YouTube is not sponsoring or accountable for your giveaway. This is not exhaustive legal advice; you should seek legal counsel for your unique jurisdiction.

Choose Your Giveaway Type

Your giveaway type should be consistent with your defined goal. You can use partner collaborations to gain access to another YouTuber’s audience for mutual advantage. You can also employ user-generated content (UGC) contests to further engage your audience by asking them to respond with a video or a photo.

Video voting contests allow subscribers to vote on the winner. Be wary of comment-to-win contests because they require a lot of labor to validate each entry against your criteria and YouTube’s restrictions. Using a giveaway automation site like giveaway.com can streamline this process by consolidating all contest information in one place.

Select a Relevant Prize

Your prize selection can have a big impact on the success of your contest. High-profile corporations may offer grand rewards, such as paid vacations or event tickets. Smaller brands and channels can choose stuff, bundled items, or one-of-a-kind experiences such as shoutouts in a video or a Q&A session. The goal is to provide something that your target audience will appreciate.

Establish Rules and Legalities for the Giveaway

Before launching a YouTube giveaway, educate yourself about your country’s contest and promotion rules. For example, in the United States, a giveaway should not demand a purchase to enter, whereas in the United Kingdom, be sure your contest does not become a lottery, which only charities can conduct. Seek legal advice if you are unsure. Once you grasp the legalities, determine the regulations for your contest, such as eligibility, entry frequency, submission instructions, timing, and how winners will be chosen.

Add Relevant Disclaimers

According to YouTube guidelines, you must indicate that your contest is not affiliated with YouTube. You can include a disclaimer like, “This giveaway is not endorsed, associated, sponsored, or administered by YouTube or any other social media platform where it is promoted.” Additionally, mention any third-party sponsorships in your contest with a similar disclaimer.

Automate the Giveaway Process

Consider automating the process with platforms like Giveaway.com to make your job easier. This platform allows you to automate different aspects of your contest, such as setting up rules, tracking entries, and even selecting winners at random.

Streamlining these tasks saves time while ensuring your contest’s fairness and openness. Automation can be especially useful for recurring giveaways, allowing you to maintain regular engagement with your audience with minimal personal effort. Learn more.

A Template on How to Use Giveaway.com to Boost Your YouTube Engagement

Here is a template to an existing Competition Giveaway on the Giveaway.com platform that you can follow and customize to boost channel engagement. This giveaway is for “FAC. GIVEAWAY x SolvEnig Permind”

You can check it out here.

This campaign requires participants to complete 20 tasks including visiting the brand’s YouTube channel and doing some custom tasks on their website.

The campaign has a timed draw method that chooses winners who complete the task when the selected time elapses.

Here’s how you can create something similar to boost your YouTube engagements:

Step 1: Log in to Giveaway.com to choose the giveaway mode. Click on Create Competition Giveaway. You will be required to fill in basic info such as: title, description, cover image, and draw method.

Step 2: After completing the basic information, you will be requested to set up tasks for participants on YouTube for participants that specify how they enter the contest. You can set up simple tasks such as;

• Subscribing to your channel
• Liking and Commenting on your videos
• Sharing your channel on their social media.

Here is a sample task caption that can be used. You can either add your own caption/ description or choose from the following two samples:

1. Hurry! Enter our [Your Brand Name] YouTube contest for a chance to win $10 [Your Prize]. To win:

• Subscribe to our YouTube channel [Your YouTube URL]
• Like and comment on our most recent video [URL Included]

Want to win [Your Prize]? Follow the steps to join, and complete the task to win!

2. Claim FREE [Your Prize] by participating in our [Your Brand Name] YouTube giveaway! Complete this take to win:

• Subscribe to our YouTube channel [Your YouTube URL]
• Share this giveaway post on your social media platform

Get your FREE [Your Prize]. Join Now [Giveaway Link]

Note: Fill in the blanks with the appropriate URL to complete the caption/ description.

Step 3: Next is to set up the rewards for participants. There are 3 categories of rewards to choose from: Token Reward, NFT Rewards, and Other Rewards. Choose the one appropriate for your contest. Also, you can reward winners with prizes such as Gift cards, Electronics, Free Subscriptions, etc.

Step 4: Preview the contest overview to ensure every detail has been captured. You can customize the giveaway design to match the overall appeal of your brand. Once you’ve completed all these, your contest will be launched immediately. You can either make your contest public or private.

Step 5: With Giveaway.com’s user-friendly dashboard, you can keep track of your contest participation. Giveaway.com offers tracking tools to help you measure the effectiveness of your campaign. With these real-time analytics, you may adjust your campaign as appropriate.

Step 6: Finally, once the contest ends, you must award prizes to the winners. Depending on the reward type, you can distribute it manually or automatically. After the campaign, you can examine the results to see if you met your objectives.

Get started immediately and boost your YouTube engagement by creating a Competition Giveaway with Giveaway.com!

Conclusion

It is critical to keep your audience engaged, and conducting contests on your channel is an effective way to do so, as it has the twin benefits of rewarding your viewers while increasing their active participation. These contests, with adequate planning, execution, and follow-up, can greatly improve your channel’s engagement numbers and develop a deeper feeling of community among your subscribers.

Each YouTube channel, though, is distinctive, as are its subscribers. Personalize your contests to your target audience’s interests and preferences while remaining authentic to your content style. After all, the success of a contest resides not only in the number of entries but also in the deeper link it helps you develop with your audience, converting casual viewers into loyal followers.