Social media is now an essential part of our friendships. We go online to share news, make plans, catch up and chat. Half of the world’s population uses social media, and research has shown that friendships are just as meaningful online as face-to-face.
So why not taking advantage of this special day to increase brand awareness and promote your product? Here are some ideas to create a Friendship Day giveaway or contest.
Friendship Day contest ideas: Social media giveaway
Friendship Day is the perfect excuse for users to show how much they care about their friends. Run a social media giveaway to reward users while also increasing engagement.
Social media giveaways have the potential of attracting many participants. Ask them to comment on the post or mention their friends in the comments to help the giveaway go viral, and for their chance to win of course! Just like the example below.
If you’re looking into running a Friendship Day giveaway but don’t know where to start, here are some ready-made templates for Friendship Day giveaways and contests.
Friendship Day Instagram Giveaway
Instagram has become the most popular social network – for brands and online users. There are just so many different ways to raise brand awareness and interact with the community. Comment-based Instagram Giveaways tend to attract many participants. Ask participants to answer a question in the comments or tag their friends to participate.
In the example above, the artist has found a great way to connect Friendship Day with their target audience of fiction fans: a Harry Potter-themed giveaway. She asked followers to tag the 3 friends in their squad, just like the group of friends pictured in her Harry Potter fan art.
Here’s another fantastic example of a Friendship Day promotion organized by a haircare brand on Instagram. We’ve all seen at least a few episodes of this famous TV show, right? The organizers invited their followers to tag the Ross, Rachel, Phoebe, Joey, Chandler, or Monica from their life and explain why they resemble the character. It was a fun giveaway to gain a lot of recognition, boost brand engagement, and reinforce brand awareness.
Remember: be creative! The cooler idea you have, the more participants your giveaway will attract!
Friendship Day contest ideas: Mind the design and content of your promotion
Friendship Day will give you plenty of ideas to create a visually appealing design that resonates with people’s emotions. If the image you use is already viral in itself (for example, the friendship between a dog and a cat), you’ve already done a significant part of the work.
It is very important to come up with a short and clear title that includes a call to action, the prize that can be won, and the mechanics of the promotion (giveaway, photo contest, answer the question, etc.). For example, “Send us a photo with your best animal friend and win tickets to the concert of X!” The promotional text should be understandable and explain what it entails and what users need to do to participate.
Take a look at the examples of the Friendship Day giveaway above. They all them focus on visually highlighting the holiday or the reason for the giveaway. You can use an image, a GIF, or a video, but users should immediately recognize that you are running a giveaway for Friendship Day. It is also very useful to display or mention the prize prominently.
Your giveaway should also include the dates of the promotion and remind participants of the prize they can win. The beauty of a Friendship Day giveaway is that it’s easy to ask users to mention their friends, which can help your campaign go viral.
Remember to create and share clear and explanatory Terms & Conditions with all the details of the giveaway to make sure your giveaway runs smoothly. You can include them in the post text, but also provide a link in your bio and even use the swipe-up link in your stories.
Friendship Day giveaway to collect contact details
If you want your Friendship Day promotions help you achieve other marketing objectives, such as collecting contact information for your newsletters, the following examples may be of interest to you. You can finish off your giveaway with a random prize draw among all participants or a specific chosen segment.
You can create an Entry Form Giveaway. It consists of setting up a microsite with a customizable registration form in which you can decide the fields participants need to fill out to enter the giveaway. The prize will be crucial here, as it should be motivating enough for participants to provide their data to the brand in exchange for a chance to win. Take a look at the following example, which highlights the prize being offered:
it’s true that no prize that can match the value of a good friendship. However, you can always ensure that friends have a great time by giving away tickets or discounts for activities they can enjoy together. Movie tickets, amusement park passes, museum visits, concert tickets, and the like make for great prizes for Friendship Day promotions. Participants will be encouraged to sign up if the prize is particularly appealing to them and will likely want to share the opportunity with their friends, leading to an even more viral promotion of your contest.
Use a referral system, where participants receive additional entries for every friend they successfully refer to the contest if you want to increase the virality of the giveaway. Your Friendship Day campaign is a great opportunity to encourage participants to share the giveaway, as it often offers prizes to share with friends. This will nudge participants to spread the word and invite their friends to join, widening the reach of your contest.
The Refer a Friend app allows you to select the finalists based on the number of new users each participant brings to the promotion. Typically, when the contest rewards users who successfully convert their friends into participants using the referral system, the sharing rate can rise to 99.31%. Take a look at the following example of a giveaway with referral system. Participants get additional entries when referred friends sign up to the giveaway.
Other Friendship Day contest ideas
It may be that the prize doesn’t have a high monetary value and/or is a product from the brand itself, but it’s the dynamics and target audience that make the giveaway a success. This is the case with the following example, a giveaway of two sets of products from the organizing brand, with two peculiarities:
- Participants not only register to the giveaway, but also have to answer a knowledge quiz about gastronomy and friendship.
- Participants get additional entries if they recruit friends to participate in the promotion.
Quizzes are a great way to entertain and get to know your audience better. What’s more, you collect contact information as participants register to have a chance to win the final prize. It’s a unique way to run a Friendship Day giveaway, with a more interactive dynamic.
Another promotion that tends to generate a lot of virality on social media for Friendship Day is a Photo Voting Contest. Images themselves are attractive content that is easy to share and view, which is why organizing such a contest can lead to many shares. Think of a catchy phrase to describe the contest, such as “We’re searching for the best Friendship Day photos. Participate and win a double ticket to a city event.” Encourage your followers to upload fun photos with their besties to enter the prize draw. In the following example, the brand asks participants to upload a photo with their friends and gather a certain number of votes to enter the giveaway of a group dinner.
If you want to give it an extra touch of uniqueness, suggest that participants submit an old photo with their best friend (for example, from when they were children) alongside a current one. This way, you emphasize the message of long-lasting friendships. It would then be a good idea to set up a voting system where only participants with a minimum number of votes are eligible for the final giveaway. This will encourage users to share the contest to be ranked among the top voted entries.
Yet another original idea for your Friendship Day photo contest is to allow participants to decorate their photos with frames and stickers. How about creating custom messages for Friendship Day and allowing users to send them to their loved ones along with a photo? Our PhotoFun product makes that possible!
There are plenty of options to celebrate Friendship Day with your brand’s community. It is a campaign that can be tailored to any type of product or company as it is a celebration that everyone can participate in. However, if you have any doubts about how to implement it or which promotion suits your brand and objectives best, feel free to contact us via live chat, we will be happy to help.
