Some giveaways don't count you until you reshare the post — to your Story, your feed, or both. It's the host's favorite mechanic because your repost markets the promotion to your followers for free. But a share only earns you an entry if the host can actually find and verify it, and that's where most entrants quietly disqualify themselves. Here's how to share so your entry sticks. 📤
Share it the way the rules ask — Story vs. feed aren't interchangeable
Read the caption before you tap anything, because "share to your Story" and "share to your feed" are two different tasks and hosts check for the specific one. On Instagram, resharing a feed post to your Story is one tap of the paper-airplane icon, but reposting it to your own permanent feed is a separate action many people skip. On Facebook, "Share" gives you a menu — "Share to Feed" versus "Share to a Story" — and picking the wrong one can leave you uncounted. If the rules say both, do both.
The bigger catch is that a Story disappears in 24 hours. If a giveaway runs for a week and the host draws the winner on day seven, your day-one Story is long gone and there's no proof you ever entered. When the entry is a Story share, either wait until the final day or two to post it, or add it to a Highlight so it stays live. A feed post doesn't have this problem — it sits there until you delete it — which is exactly why some hosts prefer feed shares for longer promotions.
Keep the share public — a private profile makes you invisible
This is the single most common reason share-to-enter attempts fail: the host can't see a post from a private account. If your Instagram is set to private or your Facebook share went out to "Friends" or "Only me," the person verifying entries hits a wall and moves on. On Facebook especially, the audience selector defaults to whatever you used last, so a share you thought was public may have quietly gone to Friends-only. Before you share, set that post's audience to Public, and confirm your profile itself isn't locked down.
You don't have to leave everything public forever. Flip the shared post — or your whole profile — to public when you enter, keep it that way through the announced end date plus a few extra days for the host to do the drawing, then switch back if you like. The key is that the post stays visible and public for the entire window the host might check it, not just the minute you post it. A share that's already private by draw day counts for nothing, no matter how early you entered.
Tag the host so they can actually find your entry
A share buried in thousands of others is a needle in a haystack unless you make it easy to find, so tag the host's account and use their exact hashtag. On a Story, add a mention sticker (@theiraccount) — many brands get notified of Story mentions and can tap straight through to verify you. In a feed caption, tag the account by hand and copy the campaign hashtag character for character from the original post; a typo like #summersweeps instead of #summersweep drops you out of the feed the host searches.
Then leave a trail for yourself. Screenshot your share the moment it's live — Story mention included — so that if a dispute comes up you can prove you posted correctly and on time. Don't delete the post until winners are announced and confirmed, because pulling it early erases your entry even if you did everything right. The whole point of share-to-enter is visibility: share it publicly, tag the host, keep it up long enough to be checked, and your entry does its job.
Share it public, tag the host, and keep it live until the winner's announced. 🏷️