Great Social Media Idea: Giveaway Galore!

Disney's Frozen is an unstoppable force at this point. You can't work on a college campus without having heard Let It Go fluttering out of dormroom windows, and it is now officially the highest-grossing animated film of all time. (Though, of course, Snow White still rules the roost if you adjust for inflation... gotta give props to the grand dame of animation.)

So, when University of New Hampshire recently announced that UNH alumna and writer/director of Frozen Jennifer Lee is going to be its commencement speaker, it was no shock that it proved to be an exceedingly popular choice. But what is really cool is how UNH - and its awesome social media maestro Jason Boucher - leveraged that announcement through an old-fashioned giveaway, which when done correctly (like in this case) can still be one of the most effective things you can do through social media.

I'll let Jason explain what they did:

Together with this announcement, we gave away 5 blu-ray movies of Frozen to 'celebrate' the announcement. The giveaways were done through Twitter and Instagram by sharing the hashtag #IBelieveInUNH and tagging @UofNH to enter. We randomly chose winners and here is what we got: http://unh.me/uX3OS and http://unh.me/uX3XN and http://unh.me/uX42k and this: http://instagram.com/p/l-PbJikPXo/

What better way to leverage a huge, breaking news item that you know is going to blow up on social media than by incorporating a giveaway that does triple duty: promoting an institutional hashtag, Twitter, and Instagram?

Done right - and this one, which naturally connects to a major event/announcement and has a purpose beyond drumming up engagement for engagement's sake - giveaways are an incredibly powerful tool for social media managers. They establish good will, they reward followers, they make people excited to take part in the content you produce, and they can expose your page to huge amounts of new followers - many of whom are lurkers that just needed that extra push to finally get on board.

Well done, UNH!