A giveaway or contest is a short promotion where people enter to win a prize, and the job is writing the rules, the posts that run it and the follow-up to everyone who entered. It is a Workflow job that takes an afternoon: the AI drafts every piece from one brief, and you judge, fix and schedule them. The AI drafts, and you pick the winner. Before you open the chat, decide three things: the prize, how people enter, and the exact start and end. Those three choices shape every word that comes back.
- Shape
- Workflow
- Sitting
- an afternoon
The shape: Workflow
A giveaway is not one post. It is a set of pieces that have to agree on the same facts: the official rules, an announcement post, one or two reminder posts, a last-call post, a winner announcement, a message to the winner, and a note to everyone who did not win. If the end date in the rules says Friday and the reminder post says Sunday, you have a problem in public. That is why this job takes the Workflow shape.
The AI is good at the middle of the chain. It keeps one set of facts consistent across a dozen pieces, writes posts in a steady voice, and drafts plain rules from your answers. It is not good at the ends. It cannot choose a prize worth wanting, know the laws where you operate, export your entry list, or draw a fair winner.
For you, the Workflow shape means three passes in one afternoon. The first pass is gathering the facts below, which takes about half an hour. The second pass is one brief pasted into ChatGPT or Claude, which takes a few minutes. The third pass is judging every piece against the facts sheet, fixing what is wrong, and scheduling the posts, which takes the rest of the afternoon. Each pass ends in a check: the facts are final before you draft, the rules are right before you read the posts, and every post matches the rules before anything is scheduled.
What you give the AI
The AI can only be as accurate as your facts sheet. Write these down before you start:
- The prize, with its retail value. Name it exactly: "one 60-minute massage, with its retail value written out," not "a free service." A prize your current customers would want is better than an expensive one that attracts people who will never buy.
- Giveaway or contest. Chance-based (a random draw) or merit-based (best photo, best answer, judged by you).
- How people enter. One method, stated plainly: comment on the post, fill in a form on your website, or reply to an email. If you use a form, the guide to forms with AI covers building it.
- Who can enter. Age (18 and over is common), where they must live, and who is excluded, such as your staff and their families.
- The dates. Start date and time, end date and time, your time zone, and the day you will announce the winner.
- How the winner is chosen and told. A random draw from the exported entry list, or judging against criteria you name. How you will contact them, and how long they have to reply before you pick someone else.
- Your business details for the rules. Legal business name, the address you use publicly, and a contact email for questions.
- The platforms. Which channels you will post on, so the AI writes the right length for each.
- Two or three past posts that sound like you. Paste them so the drafts match your voice.
- The offer for people who did not win, if you have one. Something real and modest with an end date, or nothing at all.
What comes back
Paste the brief below into ChatGPT or Claude with your facts filled in where the brackets are. Paste your sample posts at the end.
Draft the full set of materials for a social media giveaway.
Business: [legal name, what we do, public address, contact email]
Type: [giveaway with a random draw / contest judged on stated criteria]
Prize: [exact prize and retail value]
How to enter: [one method]
Who can enter: [age, location, exclusions]
Opens: [date, time, time zone]
Closes: [date, time, time zone]
Winner chosen: [how, by whom, on what date]
Winner contacted: [how, and how long they have to reply]
Platforms: [list]
Offer for everyone who entered: [the offer and its end date, or "none"]
Write:
1. Official rules in plain English, with headings: sponsor, eligibility, how to enter, entry period, prize and value, how the winner is chosen, how the winner is notified, a statement that no purchase is necessary to enter or win (for a giveaway), a statement that the promotion is not sponsored or run by any social platform, and how to contact us.
2. An announcement post for each platform listed.
3. Two reminder posts, one midway and one on the last day.
4. A winner announcement post, with a placeholder for the winner's first name.
5. A short private message to the winner.
6. A short email to everyone who entered and did not win, thanking them and giving the offer if there is one.
Rules: use only the facts above. Every post must state how to enter and the closing date and time. Where a fact is missing, write [CHECK] instead of guessing. Do not require tagging friends or sharing a post as a condition of entry. No hype words, no fake urgency, no claims about results. Match the voice of the sample posts below.
Sample posts:
[paste two or three]What comes back is plain text in one long reply: a page of rules with headings, a handful of posts, a winner message and a follow-up email. If the reply cuts off, ask for "the rest, starting from the winner announcement" and it picks up where it stopped. Copy the rules into a page on your website, and copy each post into its own draft so you judge them one at a time.
How to judge it
Judge the rules first. If a fact is wrong in the rules, it is wrong everywhere, and it is faster to fix your facts sheet and run the brief again than to patch a dozen pieces.
A bad result looks like this:
- The facts drift. The closing time, the prize value or the entry method differs between the rules and a post. Lay the facts sheet next to each piece and check those three items line by line.
- The rules say "purchase required" for a random draw. Or the posts imply it, with lines like "buy any service to enter." For a chance-based giveaway that is a problem, so remove it.
- The entry asks for tags or shares. "Tag three friends" or "share to enter" crept in even though the brief said not to. Change the entry step to the one method you chose.
- It invents. A prize detail, an extra winner, a value, a date or a quote you never gave it. Search the drafts for numbers and quotation marks, and delete anything that is not on your facts sheet.
- It shouts. "Huge," "insane," "don't miss out," countdown pressure, a wall of hashtags. Your sample posts are the standard, and anything louder goes.
- The follow-up is a sales pitch. The note to people who did not win leads with an offer before it says thank you, or the offer has no end date. Thank them first, then the offer in one line.
- The [CHECK] marks are gone. If a fact was missing and no [CHECK] appears, the AI guessed. Find the guess and replace it with the real answer.
A good result is plain, short and boringly consistent. Every post answers what the prize is, how to enter and when it closes, in the same words. For a second look at the posts before they go out, the AI post checker flags generic wording and unsupported claims.
What stays with you
The AI does not know your local laws, your platforms' current rules or your entry list, so the parts that carry risk stay with you.
The law where you run it. Giveaway rules vary by state and country. A chance-based giveaway in the US generally cannot require a purchase, and some states add registration requirements for larger prize values. If the prize is worth more than a gift card, or you are running it across several states, read your state's rules or ask a lawyer before it goes live.
The platform's current rules. Facebook and Instagram each publish promotion guidelines, and they change. Read the current version for every platform you post on, the same day you schedule the posts.
The entry list. Someone has to export every comment or form entry when the giveaway closes, remove duplicates and anyone who broke the rules, and keep that list. That is you.
The draw. Pick the winner yourself, from the real list, with a method you can explain: a random number generator against the numbered rows, or the judging criteria you published. Write down how you did it and when. The AI should never be the one who chooses.
Delivering the prize. Contact the winner, confirm they are eligible, and hand over the prize as promised. A prize that is late or smaller than described undoes the goodwill the giveaway built.
Permission to email. Only send the follow-up to people who gave you their email for that purpose. Say in the rules that everyone who enters gets one follow-up email, and put an unsubscribe link in it. Anyone who did opt in belongs in your regular email newsletter.
The send button. Nothing posts or sends until you have read it against the facts sheet.
An example
This is an editorial example with an invented business, not a customer.
Say you run a one-room yoga studio and want more people to try a class before the new year. Your prize is a five-class pass with its retail value written out. Entry is one method: a short form on your website with a name and an email address, plus a checkbox to join the studio's newsletter. It is open to adults who live in your state, staff excluded, and it runs for ten days with a closing time in your time zone. The winner is drawn at random from the exported form entries two days after it closes, and has a week to reply. Everyone who entered gets a note with a modest first-class offer that ends at the end of the month.
You paste the brief with those facts and two of your calmest past posts. The rules come back clean except for a [CHECK] where your legal business name goes, which you fill in. The last-day reminder says "share with a friend for an extra entry," which you never asked for, so you delete it. The note to people who did not win opens with the offer, so you move the thank-you to the top. By the end of the afternoon you have the rules on a page of your website, the announcement and both reminders scheduled, and the winner post, winner message and follow-up email saved as drafts for the day you need them.
Giveaway or contest: choosing the type
| Type | How the winner is chosen | Who does the judging work | Best when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Giveaway (random draw) | A random draw from every valid entry | You export the list and run the draw | You want the most entries with the least effort for entrants |
| Contest (judged) | The best entry against published criteria | You read every entry and judge | You want entries that are useful to you, like photos of your work in use |
| Contest with a public vote | The most votes, within published rules | You watch for vote-gaming and settle disputes | You have an engaged audience and time to referee |
Most small businesses are best served by the first row. It asks the least of entrants and the least of you, and a clear entry form keeps the list clean. The second row is worth it when the entries themselves become something you can use, with the entrant's permission, after the contest ends. If the giveaway runs alongside an in-person day, the guide to events with AI covers that side.
When it is over, the habit worth keeping is the thank-you, and thank-you notes with AI shows how to make it routine.
Of every job on this list, social media is the one that comes back every week, and Boomp is software that does that one for you. See ten posts made from your website, free
