How to Run a Collaboration Giveaway

A collaboration giveaway is one draw held by two or more accounts for the same prize. Each account brings its own followers to the other one's post, so both sides reach a new audience without paying for ads. Everything else follows from two decisions: who you partner with, and which post the draw actually runs on.

What You Gain, and What It Can Cost

The gain is an audience swap: your followers see your partner's account and theirs see yours. In a solo giveaway, reaching new people is left to the feed; here the other side's audience is present from day one.

The risk sits in the same place. If the people who arrive have no interest in what you do, all you are left with is the bill for the prize, and a crowd that unfollows the week after the draw is worse than one that never came, because it drags down the engagement on everything you post next. The partner matters more than the prize does.

Choosing the Right Partner

Overlapping audience: their followers should plausibly want what you sell. A hairdresser and a cosmetics brand in the same city overlap; a hairdresser and a gaming account do not.
Similar size: if the gap is wide, the smaller account gains followers and the larger one mostly gains a bill. That arrangement never turns into a second collaboration.
Not the same product: two direct competitors running one giveaway leave both customer bases undecided. Be complementary, not identical.
Someone who replies: questions come in, dates shift, the winner has to be reached. A partner who answers two days later leaves you alone in the middle of it.

Compare comment counts rather than follower counts. How many followers you need for a giveaway explains why that is the honest number.

Whose Post Does the Draw Run On?

One post is the simplest route: one comment section, one pool. The drawback is that reach depends on a single account, and part of your partner's audience never travels to a post they did not see in their own feed. A post on each account spreads in both feeds, and its old problem was the draw itself, since two comment sections meant two pools, two draws and two results, which is hard to call fair.

DrawPicker solves this directly: one draw can combine up to five posts. Paste both accounts' post links into the same draw and every comment lands in one pool, the winner comes out of that shared pool, and a single verification code covers the whole thing. You get the reach of separate posts with the simplicity of one draw.

Two details when you merge posts. The rules text must be identical, word for word, on both — there is a ready joint template in the giveaway caption article. And the same comment option counts one user's identical text once by default, so somebody who copies their comment onto both videos shows up as a single entry. Switch that option if you want every comment counted separately.

Splitting the Prize and the Cost

Who ships it: with a single prize, agree in writing who posts the parcel, which countries you both ship to, and how the cost is shared.
Two separate prizes are cleaner: draw two winners and let each side send its own prize to one of them. No accounting, no apologies.
The draw itself: draws are free up to 500 comments, and in a collaboration the comments from both posts add up, so you reach that line sooner than in a solo giveaway. Decide in advance who tops up credit.
Put it in one message: prize, shipping, dates, who runs the draw and who announces when. Most disputes start with something that was only ever agreed out loud.

Entry Conditions and the Follow Requirement

The usual condition is "follow both accounts", plus a comment and often a tag. Keep it at three steps at most. The comment is the one you cannot drop: the winner is drawn from comments, so anyone who does not comment is not in the pool.

Check the follow by hand. Nothing verifies for you which entrant follows which account. Run the draw, then have both partners open the drawn winner on their own account; if one side does not have them, move on to the reserve. Draw more reserves than usual, because with two accounts to follow, the first name is noticeably more likely to fail one of the conditions.

Announce One Result on Both Accounts at Once

Agree the day and the hour beforehand: if one account announces early, the other's followers hear the result second hand and the collaboration stops looking equal. What matters most is that both share the same giveaway code. With only one code, both audiences open the same independent result page and nobody has to trust a screenshot. The code is case sensitive, and checking it does not require an account.

How to Run a Collaboration Giveaway, Step by Step

Agree the prize, the dates, the shipping area and who tops up credit.
Write one rules text and use it identically on both posts.
Publish on the same day, with each account tagging the other.
When entries close, run one draw with both post links in it.
Check the drawn winner's follows on both accounts; use a reserve if one fails.
Post the result and the same code on both accounts at the agreed hour.

Once your dates are set you can run the draw on the free giveaway page and put the code under both posts. Entrants then check the outcome themselves on the giveaway code check page.