If you are a pro gamer, streamer on Twitch, or you simply treat your gaming activity in a more serious way, you must have wondered how to promote your personal brand or channel. Today, with millions of gamers and streamers worldwide, it can be a real challenge.

Professional gamers take different methods to increase their visibility in the crowd. Among these ideas, organizing contest with prizes or giveaways is an extremely popular activity. In this article, we will consider whether organizing giveaways make sense and what challenges it brings.

Contests for gaming

Various types of contests are popular in the gaming world, I would even say much more popular than in any other industry. Why? Because the gaming world offers tons of great ideas for prizes, from in-game items to gaming gear, consoles, and PC gaming sets.

Many players dream about equipment that sometimes they simply cannot afford. To win the latest and cutting-edge gaming gear in the competition is a great lure for them. The same is true for virtual prizes: premium and pro accounts for certain games, in-game items, game money skins, or gift cards are highly welcomed loot for many. This is because having them is often the way to better results in the game and more fun.

Moreover, there are tons of new games released almost every day on platforms like Steam. For many, the possibility of winning some of them in the giveaway and trying just for free is a perfect way to get familiar with the new trends in the industry. You may not want to spend a lot of money for a game you don’t know anything about… but why not win a Steam code for it in a sweepstake?

This is why contests are so popular with gamers. There are many gamers who are looking for giveaways and contests to take part in, and many who are organizing them. Some streamers on Twitch organize a contest for their fans and subscribers once a month or even more. It is a perfect way to be in touch with them, show them respect and gratitude, and have some fun!

Running gaming giveaways

So, it is definitely worth organizing a gaming giveaway for your brand. But how to do it?

You may have different purposes for organizing a giveaway. Sometimes you are just starting a gaming channel and want to get some first followers. Or maybe you are a big brand already and want to do something for your fans. Perhaps, you are releasing a new game and want to create some buzz around it? 

Any reason is good but you should think about what you want to achieve, and what type of content will be good for you. You should analyze what platform you want to run your contest in, will it be Twitch, Steam, Discord, or perhaps even Youtube, Instagram, and Twitter. Hopefully, regardless of the platform, you can do a cross-platform promotion. For example, ask people to follow you on Twitch abut also grow your Discord and Youtube channels. 

You may also want to involve other gamers, namely your gaming friends in it. Why not ask your giveaway participants to follow not only your channel but also your friends’ ones. 

Regardless of your strategy and the goals you want to achieve you should resolve some technical side. How to run the contest itself, and how to pick the winners. A lot of gamers would use Twitter posts on Discord messages asking people to follow them or repost. But this way has many limits, firstly it is related to one platform only, and doing a promotion of multiple channels or profiles is almost impossible. Also, picking up a winner is a headache because it is never fully randomized. Actually, this is a pretty old-school method.

Fortunately, you could use a giveaway tool like Socialman for your gaming contest. It has a built-in mechanism for hosting a giveaway and a system for picking winners. What’s more important, it is integrated with all the social media and gaming social platforms you may wish to use: Twitch, Steam, Discord, Youtube, and many many more. It will let you do the promotion on many social platforms for multiple channels without any limits!

The gaming world is full of fun and organizing a contest for your fellow gamers is a part of it. 

It’s also no more complicated and messy, so why not try doing your own contest next time?