Facebook used to be the land of ease and happiness. You would post something, and ::gasp::, the people who had “Liked” your Page would see it. Now Facebook is as tedious as a seventh grade algebra class with its algorithms and formulas. You can have thousands of followers and because of the “new social media math,” your posts will be seen by 278. As Victor Luckerson wrote for TIME, “The Free-Marketing Gravy Train is Over on Facebook.”

You may think, “Quit your whining and, furthermore, why bother? Just let Facebook go and move on to Google+ and Twitter.” However, the cold, hard facts are that many companies offering paid blogging opportunities still want to see your number of Facebook followers. Those numbers can equal cash in your PayPal.

So how to increase those numbers? Facebook wants you to pay for promotion, but if  Veritasium is to be believed, and he presents a very good case, promoting for “Likes” can actually send your engagement spiraling into the toilet. We have sadly seen this happen to friends. What is the point of getting new “Likes” if Facebook then shows your posts to 8% of your followers? It certainly is not worth the $100 Facebook personally wants to charge us to promote a SINGLE post. Boo Facebook.

But we have found and tested another way to get our Page hopping that is actually, dare we say, fun: The Facebook Flash Giveaway (FF Giveaway).

This type of giveaway became possible when Facebook changed its promotion guidelines on Aug. 27, 2013. You are now allowed to run a giveaway directly on your Page’s timeline whereas you had to use a third party app before.

This is a round robin type giveaway lasting 24 hours where people can move from linked Page to Page entering a separate giveaway on each one. The last Page in line links to the first Page in line. It’s like infinity personified.

It is also quick, cheap, and easy.

To get started, you need:

• A group of friends to make up your round robin whom you can trust to start and stop the giveaway on time and send out their prizes. At least four other Pages need to participate to create momentum.
• A prize valued between $10 and $20.
• This prompt:

**FLASH GIVEAWAY!**
Because I appreciate my Facebook fans, I would like to give one of you [insert your prize here]  (open to US only)!

HOW TO ENTER: Like my page and this post, and simply leave a comment on this post [insert your comment prompt here]!

This is the giveaway that keeps on giving! There are [some number] other bloggers involved in this giveaway! Hop through to [link to the name of Page after you] to enter her giveaway and to find out where to go next! Hurry, this FLASH GIVEAWAY ends in 24 hours!

*This giveaway is sponsored by [insert your Facebook Page here] and is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook. Giveaway is only open from [Day, date, and time including time zone] until [Day, date, and time zone 24 hours later]. One winner will be selected at random and will be announced (and tagged) in another post.

 Now the How-To Steps:

1. Select Your Participants

As mentioned before, these should be trustworthy people because if one person does not post on time, the round robin flops. You need at least four other Pages to make it fun, but consider that the more people involved, the more unwieldy it can become. We had seven Pages in our FF Giveaway.

2. Discuss Prizes

The great thing is, because there are so many cumulative prize opportunities, no prize has to be extravagant. Gift cards are fantastic because you can electronically send them and have the contest ended and wrapped up in fifteen minutes. But make sure participants have a chance to discuss so everyone is not giving away the same retailer or there is an (embarrassing) discrepancy in amounts. We gave away a “Suburban Survival Pack”: a copy of Suburban Haiku and a $15 Starbucks E-Gift Card.

Have each participant make her comment prompt tie in with her prize. Ours was “simply leave a comment on this post letting us know if you live in the suburbs, city, or country!”

3. Make a Graphic for Promotion

A good size for Facebook is a 1200 x 1200. We use PicMonkey for all of our editing needs. Behold what we created for our FF Giveaway.

4. Determine the Order

We roughly ordered the Pages from most amount of followers to least amount of followers. We sent this out in an email to the participants along with what prizes had been selected.

5. Determine the Time

Be careful that everyone is clear about the time zone. We had a participant in California so we chose the start and stop times as 11:00 AM EDT. Agreement about the end time is even more crucial because everyone must be available to edit their status updates to read “This Contest Has Ended.”

6. Schedule your Status Update

No one has to hover poised over her keyboard to publish on time because of the Facebook Scheduling Tool.  Cut and paste your prompt then schedule for the designated start time.

One very important note: Only post your giveaway prompt ONCE or you will muddle your winner selection.

 7. Promotion

You can write a blog post promoting the giveaway, but we did not. We just posted a teaser on Facebook the day before. On the day of, we promoted on Google+, Twitter, and Pinterest using the graphic and the URL for our Facebook status update.

IMPORTANT: You can NEVER ask for the status update to be SHARED. This violates Facebook guidelines.

Here is how you get that URL:

This is how we promoted the FF Giveaway update on Facebook the next morning.

8. Pin Your Status Update to The Top of Your Wall

One of the beautiful things about the FF Giveaway is that people are actually being directed to your Page instead of just interacting with you in the Newsfeed. Your lovely Facebook cover photo will actually be seen (make sure it’s good) and maybe you can hook in some new blog fans. But you must make sure the FF Giveaway post is the first thing they see when they visit. Since you’ll probably post other things during the 24 hours the contest is running, you will need to “pin” your post to the top.

9. Relax for 24 hours.

Whistle, whistle. Twiddle thumbs. We’re just kidding. We meant you don’t have to do anything else to tend to the contest. You still have to wipe noses, find shoes, and taxi everyone around.

10. End the Contest

At the end time, go in and edit the status (you can see the edit option in the previous image) by adding at the top: **This Giveaway Has Ended**. Unpin the update from the top of your Page.

11. Select a Winner

So easy. There’s an app that will select your winner from the comments and let you notify him or her directly through Facebook: Rafflecopter Facebook Flash Giveaway App.

Important: The app only shows your last seven status updates. For us, our giveaway was status number 9. Waa, waaa. We had to go back to our Facebook Page, delete two posts that were more recent than our contest, and then relaunch the app. Voilà, our giveaway now appeared as a choice, but it would have been easier to not post as many things during the contest period.

So you select your post, click on “Pick a Random Winner” and the app gives you a name within seconds. You can click on the envelope beside the name to contact him or her immediately. We always take screenshots of our winners, just to cover our bases.

Important: The app is run through the personal account you used to create your Page. The winner will be notified through your personal account, so if you don’t want that to happen, you should contact through your Page and NOT use the envelope icon.

12. Get your winner’s details and send out the prize!

Benefits:

• For minimal effort and cost, each participating Page (with followers ranging from 8,400 to 800) got around 40 new “Likes” in the 24 hours.
• These were high quality “Likes” that were apt to stay around and engage because they were “referred” from similar genre Pages.
• We entertained our followers. We got so much positive feedback about how fun the contest was.
• Our “Talking About This” Facebook number rose to %115 of our followers; something we had not seen in a long time and something that kept the “Likes” rolling in even after the contest had ended.

 Cons:

• Explaining to our friends exactly what a Facebook Flash Giveaway was, but now YOU have this post.

So go try your own giveaway, but first, could you give us a little “Like” on Facebook? You saw that coming, right?

-Ellen and Erin

You can also follow us on Google+, Twitter, and Pinterest.

Check out our books, please, “I Just Want to Be Alone” and “You Have Lipstick on Your Teeth.”

Have every post delivered to your inbox! You can opt out at any time, but you won’t want to.

Enter your email address: