When to run a giveaway, and how long it should last

Two decisions: when it starts and when it ends. The second one is where most of the damage happens, because a longer giveaway looks obviously better — more time, more entries — and the cost is invisible until the end.

Why longer is usually worse

Entries do not arrive evenly. Most of them come in the first day or two, while the post is being distributed. After that the post stops being shown and the giveaway is simply open, collecting very little.

Meanwhile the attention you built is cooling. By the time a month-long giveaway ends, the people who entered on day one have forgotten they did, and the announcement lands on an audience that is no longer paying attention — which is exactly when you most need them to look, because the announcement is where the offer to everyone who did not win goes.

Around a week concentrates the attention and keeps the announcement close enough to the entries to still matter. Shorter than three days and people who only open the app a couple of times a week never see it.

The end date is not only a date

Whatever you pick, state the time and the time zone, not just the day. "Ends on the 20th" is ambiguous by up to a day across time zones, and the ambiguity always surfaces as somebody who entered after the cut-off asking why they were not included.

Then work backwards from what has to happen after. If the prize ships, the end date has to leave room for the announcement, for the winner to reply, and for delivery. If the prize is tied to a date — a holiday, an event — the delivery deadline is the real constraint, and the giveaway has to end a week or more before it.

Tying a giveaway to a date, without the trap

Running a giveaway alongside a commercial date works, because the date has already created the intent to buy. The trap is that everyone else is doing it too: on the biggest dates, the feed is saturated and your cost of being seen is at its highest point of the year.

A giveaway on a mid-sized date, with an empty feed, often delivers more real participation for less effort. A pattern that works: one big action per half-year tied to a peak date, and smaller ones on dates nobody is competing for — your own anniversary, a product launch, clearing stock.

Day and hour: publish when your audience is there

Advice about the universally best hour to post is not worth following, because it is averaged over accounts that have nothing to do with yours. Your own account already has the answer: look at when your previous posts got their first reactions.

What generalises is weaker and still useful: the first hours decide distribution, so publish when you can actually be present to reply. A giveaway posted and then left alone for eight hours loses the window in which replying to comments feeds the distribution.

What to decide before publishing

• End date, time and time zone, written in the caption
• How long the winner has to reply, written in the same place
• When and where the result will be announced — and a permanent place, not only a Story that expires
• If the prize ships, the delivery deadline, confirmed with whoever ships it rather than estimated

Announce fast, and say the deadline in advance

The window between the entries closing and the result being published is when suspicion grows. Twenty-four hours is a reasonable ceiling, and what matters more is having stated the deadline before drawing. A deadline announced afterwards always reads as an adjustment.

If the draw takes a minute instead of an evening, announcing within twenty-four hours stops being a planning problem. Paste the post link, draw, and the result page is ready to link.