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The Year is 2026 and a young child looks to their mother and asks “Mammy? What made you and Daddy decide to live in this house?” “Well my dear, it’s actually a funny story. Your father liked and shared a Facebook post from the county GAA page nearly ten years ago. This was so he could win a free ticket to a big raffle for a brand new home and here we are today!” “Is that all Mammy?” “Well no actually, he had to tag both your aunties and his football team in the comments first before he shared it but that was it”.

This dialogue sounds like something from a dystopian future but the sad truth is that it’s very real. In an almost “Black Mirror” like response to the housing crisis, even county boards and developers have began using social media giveaways as a way to gain both awareness and engagement online. Just look at that “Free House” headline and forget about the usual mortgage process as all you desire could be just a few clicks away.

The above is an extreme example but there’s a reason why we are seeing more and more giveaways clogging up our social media feeds in recent years. Recently, I wrote about my time as meme maker back in 2016 when organic (not sponsored or paid for) reach was still an important part of social media marketing. Individuals, businesses and other pages could post content and take for granted that it would be seen by their page fans or followers. This in turn could lead to greater reach, followers, fans and engagement with their audience.

Facebook and other social networks caught onto this and began changing the algorithm to make it more difficult to achieve organic reach. To coincide with these changes, the same networks rolled out more sophisticated advertising tools so that businesses could instead pay to guarantee that their content would be seen by the right audience. Sounds like a good deal doesn’t it? Well it wasn’t for users or businesses but it has completely transformed social advertising and made social networks billions.

In response to this shift in digital algorithms, smaller brands who wanted to gain a large following were left with really only one option; To run giveaways. The bonus of these competition posts are that they take minimal effort, minimal spend (other than the prize) and yield quick and substantial rewards. The Facebook/Instagram users who enter by engaging with these posts can be targeted directly with social ads in the future.

With these kind of posts being so successful, it’s no surprise that there are always a number of scam competitions doing the rounds. A recent one from “Aer Lingus Airlines” (complete with dodgy logo drawn by a toddler) is so blatantly fake that it upset me when I saw that over 10,000 people had fallen for it.

This “Aer Lingus Airlines” page will now most likely target those who’ve been stupid enough to enter with ads from one of their legitimate business pages which is most likely selling travel related products or services. It’s kind of like the social media illuminati and it’ll never stop as long as there are thousands of “Sheeple” willing to get involved! The real victim here though is clearly “Hailey M. from Amsterdam”. Unable to receive the prize was she? She was yeah….

I still ask my brother in law if he’s heard any news on that “Free Audi A6” Facebook competition that he entered over a year ago. This was of course another scam but sure “if you aint in it, you can’t win it”. With so many competitions on social media today and scams like the above going around, is it really worth entering them at all? I used to think it wasn’t until a friend in work told me about some of her big wins. Leanne has entered competitions since Facebook pages started running them and enters between 1 and 3 per day.

She told me her key to winning them has been to enter smaller local competitions as opposed to ones that have already have thousands of likes, shares and comments. This technique has served her surprisingly well as over the last three years she has won food hampers, a widescreen tv, flip flops, a hotel voucher, sports juices, hair/beauty products, pantry vouchers, dining vouchers and a months free gym membership. So maybe next time you see one pop up on your homepage, it might be worth entering. Just make sure it’s not a scam!

It’s clear that as long as social media platforms limit organic posts and people enjoy free stuff, these kind of competitions will always run in one way or another. If you’re looking to run some competitions for your brand or just looking for a content plan, then I can help.

You can also follow me on Instagram and Facebook and share this blog for your chance to win my appreciation. Thanks and good luck!