How To Run a Scavenger Hunt with Gleam

Running a contest on social media is an awesome way to get people to spend more time scouring your content, without a doubt.

In this guide, we'll walk you through everything you need to know about running a scavenger hunt with Gleam.

A scavenger hunt giveaway is a type of interactive giveaway campaign where participants search for hidden items, clues, or codes across a website, social media channels, or other platforms.

To enter the giveaway, participants need to find these hidden elements and submit them in return for a chance to win a prize.

When you run it with Gleam, users submit the codes into the widget to be automatically verified and checked for fraudulant entries.

Running a scavenger hunt or secret code campaign is a really effective way to generate leads, boost engagement, and increase visibility. Its benefits go way beyond what you get with a simple social media giveaway.

A scavenger hunt is an awesome way to get participants to spend more time engaging with your content.

This is because when they search for clues and solve puzzles, they interact with the posts and pages that they're hidden in which will in turn lead to much deeper engagement as people are actively reading and checking out your content to find the clue as opposed to skimming and scrolling past.

Because of the deepened engagement, social media algorithms take notice and favour accounts that users spend more time interacting with.

This is because deep engagement and interaction signals to social media algorithms that your content is valuable, which means it will be pushed out to more users and you'll see increased visibility and reach.

If you're trying to generate leads and convert social media followers into paying customers, a well-executed scavenger hunt can do just that.

A scavenger hunt can drive direct traffic from social media platforms to your pages and website by posting clues that lead to those places where you sell your products.

Scavenger hunts can be a fantastic way to get users to take powerful actions, such as subscribing to your mailing list or turning on your post notifications.

For example, you can let users know that the next clue will be in your next newsletter, or to keep an eye on your Instagram as you're only leaving the secret code up for 2 hours.

To set this up is super easy.

All you have to do is customise the template below:

  view template

Decide what your secret codes are, and then when users enter these in the Gleam widget, they will be automatically verified for you.

The plus of this is that we can detect fraudulent entries and keep them all in one place.

This makes a huge difference in terms of how effective the giveaway will be and how smoothly it will run.

For example, if you're running it over on Instagram, users will either have to DM you their answers, which will be nearly impossible to keep track of and check you haven't missed entries. Alternatively, users will answer in the comments, but you then won't be able to run a prolonged giveaway as the answers will be spoiled pretty quickly as people read through the comment sections.

You'd also have to enter all of the entries manually into a random winner selection tool, which is another added hassle.

With Gleam, you can either use our public facing winner selection tool, to add another interactive element to your giveaway, or you can select the winner from your campaign and announce it on your socials.

This is a fantastic way to make sure that the winner is chosen fairly so that people want to enter more of your promotional campaigns.

  view template

There are a few options of how you can hide the codes and where you want to direct people.

If you want to increase engagement on your social media platforms, you can hide clues and codes in your social media posts, stories, or tweets.

If you want to increase your views or subscribers on YouTube, announce wherever you have followers and across all of your social media that you'll hide a clue somewhere in your video. This means users will have to watch the whole video or multiple videos to find the clue.

If you want to direct traffic to your website, announce you'll hide clues in your website somewhere so again, people have to scour your website content to find the clue.

You could also run the same campaign but in a rewards format instead of a sweepstakes.

In a rewards version of a scavenger hunt, you hide secret codes or post limited-time-only codes.

Instead of being entered for a chance to win, participants can instantly unlock a discount or reward.

To keep it manageable, you can make the codes valid for just 24 hours.

You can use our template to set this up:

  view template

This method not only creates urgency with the short expiry of the codesm but also offers instant gratification, which can boost engagement and conversion rates.

It also is a good way reduce perceived risk or catch the people who are more pessmistic about their chances of winning a sweepstakes. Plus, encourages quicker purchasing decisions if people think the deal is good and only available for a limited time only.

When you're promoting any type of giveaway, it is so important to cross promote your giveaway everywhere.

You can't assume that your Twitter followers follow you on Instagram where you've announced the giveaway, for example.

You don't want to miss out on any potential entrants so make sure you get it in front of absolutely everyone you can, newsletters, blog posts, social media.

You can also try partnering up for the giveaway. This works by finding a complementary brand that you can bundle up a prize with, and you both reap the marketing benefits.

This means you can access their follower base as they direct their customers and fans over to your page and vice versa.

You can also tie in your scavenger hunt with some promotional campaigns like Black Friday to interest those who have an eye on your sale or new product launch.

Now you know everything you need to know about setting up a savenger hunt with Gleam!