Meet giveaway, or simply giveway. In simple terms, it's a giveaway in which a person famous on Instagram gives away gifts. It can be a blogger, a famous actor, or a showbiz star, i.e. a person with a large audience. To participate in a prize draw, you need to follow all the so-called sponsors, usually on a page created specifically for this purpose.

How does giv work?

• A new account is created, the so-called contest account, in which the activity will take place
• The blogger actively promotes the gif on his main page so that as many followers as possible take part in the contest
• At the end of the contest, a random drawing of gifts is held live among the participants (who have signed up for sponsor accounts). On average, there can be 45-150 such accounts.

Sponsors: who are they?

In fact, it can be any page. In fact, the organizers of the contest do not care what content is contained in the sponsors' accounts and whether it meets at least basic ethical standards, because the main condition for participation is payment.

If you analyze the pages of geek sponsors, you will find that they are mostly people who want to become famous quickly or popularize their business without putting in too much effort.

They could be:

• Coaches and people who sell information products;
• Newly created and not quite online stores;
• Girls who dream of quickly becoming famous bloggers;
• In general, people who have money but don't have enough time or desire to manage their accounts and bring in an audience organically

And you will never see people like Yevgeny Chernyak or Oscar Hartman in the gigs, because these people are a real value and their followers come to them organically.

So what is the price of the issue?

Bloggers ask for an average of 2000-60000 UAH for participation in a gig. An impressive figure, isn't it?

And now imagine that 60-70% of the people who came to you from the giveway will unfollow you after it. And those who stayed will not see your posts because they did not interact with the page. And we immediately realize the falsity of the statement "I'll recruit people with a gif, and then I'll make great content and keep them." As we have already mentioned, people will not see your content.

It becomes clear that if you use such funds for other types of advertising, such as targeted or direct advertising on a blogger with a high-quality audience, the effect will be much higher.

Instagram is against it!

The network system prevents such contests in every way possible: it blocks accounts with gifs, posts announcing the contest, blocks for a large number of subscriptions at the same time, and there have even been precedents with a block of millionaire bloggers who announced gifs.

What will the sponsors get as a result?

And now for the most interesting part.

At first glance, everything seems more than rosy:

• A lot of followers. Yes, this figure warms the heart, but in this case, "number of followers" does not equal "popularity."
• Relatively low cost. Acquisition of 1 subscriber in gifs costs an average of 50 kopecks. This is much lower than through targeting or direct advertising on a blogger's website.

But these are only superficial results. If you analyze it deeper, the picture doesn't look so great.

Untargeted and insolvent audience.

The audience of the gifs is teenagers (13-17 years old). Is this the kind of audience you dreamed of? Hardly.

They have no interest in you or your account - they'll just click the "Follow" button. Accordingly, they will not see your posts or stories in their feed. So don't expect them to like or comment on your posts, let alone buy your products.

Your reach will drop.

Not just fall, but collapse. Instagram is a sophisticated algorithm that determines the interest of your account based on how your audience interacts with it - whether they like, comment, read posts, and watch stories. And if your content used to be more or less interesting to your audience, which consisted of your friends or people who like you, then after the giv, expect a radical change in the situation. Now, the bulk of your followers will be people who came from the giveway. They won't show any interest or activity in you, scrolling through your post as quickly as possible if they see it in their feed.

Your engagement index will drop to zero, which can mean only one thing for Instagram: you are not interesting! Your reach will drop critically. For example, your stories will be seen by less than 1% followers, and your posts in the feed will be seen by less than 5%.

Mass unsubscribes from your account.

As soon as the draw is over, fans of freebies leave sponsor accounts. The most convenient way is to simply go to the giveaway page and unsubscribe from all sponsors. Bloggers are aware of this and try to remove this list as quickly as possible. However, it doesn't help much. It's not that difficult to sort your subscriptions by chronology and delete the most recent ones. Within the first day, 30% of your followers will leave you, and within the next few days, another 20-25% will leave. Unfollowing will continue as long as the person sees your post in their feed. This means that you and your page have no value and arouse no interest. The social network will literally bury your account and reach.

Can anything be done?

The options are as follows:

• Permanent cash gifs. Your new audience loves gifts, and it seems to be the only way to keep them engaged.
• Reorient the topics of posts to a new audience.
• To be a sponsor of givens continuously, i.e. to replace some giveway followers with others.
• Increase the number of likes and comments. Then the account will not look "dead".

But this is just to appear, not to be. The above methods exist, there are "bloggers" who use them, but this is utopia. You will just have to create a new account, forgetting about the old one and all the money you have invested there.

Of course, whether or not to participate in gigs is entirely up to you. If you need to "imitate popularity," this is your option. But if you have deeper and more serious goals, you shouldn't sacrifice your account.