Social Basics
- Insights Online
- Jun 17
- 38 min read
Updated: Jun 20
By NASPL Insights Online
Published June 17, 2025
We asked lotteries how they handle social media within their organization and to provide insights into their choice of platforms and how content is differentiated between those platforms. We also asked if they produce or schedule content after hours and whether they engage directly with players. Their edited responses follow.
Arizona Lottery
We have a team dedicated to our socials, both internal and external. Members of our Marketing Department and a social team at our agency partner work together to create, plan and monitor content on our social channels.
Platforms and Content
To map out content, we develop a monthly overview calendar to ensure we include a variety of topics, such as giveaways, winner awareness, marketing campaigns, Gives Back content, and more! A majority of our content is cross-posted to Facebook, Instagram and X, and we also use LinkedIn. We vary copy and content types to optimize for each platform. We post every day of the week to our various social channels to continuously build our community.
We engage directly with customers who comment on posts or send in messages, whether it be a question, complaint, or general comment. The Arizona Lottery strives to receive feedback from our players and interact with them regularly. We engage in community management after-hours and are on standby to provide social support for any urgent items that pop up.
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Arkansas Scholarship Lottery
The ASL Marketing team collaborates with a social media team at our partner advertising agency, CJRW, for social media campaign creation and management. The agency team includes members from the social media, creative and paid media departments to ensure a cohesive and strategic approach. CJRW develops a comprehensive plan monthly for ASL review. The plan provides a schedule for each platform that includes creative assets and copy for all paid and organic posts.
Platforms and Content
Our content strategy varies by platform to maximize engagement. Facebook posts 5-7 times a week: winner announcements, beneficiary content, responsible gambling, high jackpot alerts, text-only posts, and engagement-driven content like contests and puzzles. Instagram posts 2-3 times a week: the focus is on short-form video, Instagram Stories, and photo-driven content for visual appeal promoting lottery games, beneficiary messaging, high jackpot alerts, and responsible gambling. X posts 2-3 times a week with game updates, winner announcements, high jackpot alerts, and beneficiary content. Snapchat paid posts 8-10 times a month utilizing vertical assets, segmenting Optimove audiences as well as targeting a broad audience. LinkedIn posts 2-3 times per month; sharing industry news and highlighting the Lottery’s impact on education and scholarships. This platform reaches stakeholders and is not used to speak directly to players about games. YouTube advertising monthly.
CJRW posts after hours for major events such as big local wins or live event coverage. The agency also monitors and responds directly to player questions and concerns after hours to maintain active engagement and support. We have a very active social media community.
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Atlantic Lottery
We have a team of two to three full-time employees internally who handle our organic social media presence. From time to time, we will also engage an agency partner for strategic projects.
Platforms and Content
Our priority accounts are Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. We have various content pillars that help us ensure a fair balance on the types of messaging and content we share with our audience. Certain content pillars are better suited to certain platforms. As an example, on LinkedIn we post content focused on careers, company culture and our community and social impact. By comparison, we’re more likely to post about winners, games and promotions on our Facebook and Instagram channels, where our largest following of players can be found.
We do provide after-hours posts. We will post early in the morning and on weekends when prizes are won in Atlantic Canada. We monitor comments and direction messages and reply between the hours of 8am to 10:30pm.
British Columbia Lottery Corp.
Our social media team is under the Communications Department. One senior social media specialist is dedicated to lottery, and a community manager answers questions and responds to comments for lottery as well as BCLC’s other lines of business. The marketing team oversees large paid social media campaigns.
Platforms and Content
For Facebook, our content mix includes links to winner stories on our website, winning ticket announcements, promotions, high jackpot announcements, giveaways, and player health messaging. Visual content on the platform is primarily photo-based. For Instagram, we focus on aspirational images for feed posts (for example, vacation destinations, waterfront property, etc.). For Instagram Reels, we focus on winner stories, winning ticket announcements, and high jackpot announcements. Visual content for this platform is mostly video-based. We post anywhere from 3-5 times a week on both platforms, depending on the cadence of winner stories.
The community manager engages with customers during business hours and BCLC’s Customer Support Centre team responds to questions or complaints on evenings and weekends. A representative from the social media team is on call on weekends for urgent matters. The representative will tweet about jackpot wins from BCLC’s X account the morning after a win on the weekend, and Facebook and Instagram posts for jackpot wins are published Monday morning.
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California Lottery
We have a dedicated social media team (part of the Marketing team) that oversees all aspects of our social media program. We work with our external marketing agencies on our paid social buy and some asset development; however, the majority of our social media strategy, messaging, creative direction, platform management and community management is handled in-house by our social team.
Platforms and Content
For organic (unpaid) social, we post on Facebook and Instagram 2-3 times daily and post on Threads a few times a week. Our organic social content strategy covers multiple topics, from game news to winner awareness to our mission. Content varies each month depending on seasonality, jackpot levels, or other business objectives. We also leverage LinkedIn for select messaging about our beneficiaries, our mission, job openings and organizational news. We post automated draw results on Facebook and X for Mega Millions, Powerball and SuperLotto Plus.
For paid social, we run paid campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat using an “always-on” approach. Over a year ago, we shifted to the always-on paid strategy to build efficiencies and rotate messages and creative more effectively. We have the flexibility to increase and decrease the investment level, rotate in new assets, swap out messaging, and use this buy to support multiple initiatives throughout the year. We add paid support on Reddit and YouTube 4-5 times per year in specific campaign flights.
To ensure strong engagement, we leverage platform-specific social media best practices to determine content strategy, media type and optimal posting times. For example, on Instagram we prioritize vertical video content, leaning into lifestyle and visually driven creative, whereas on Facebook we have a lot of success with static carousels and animated playable posts. The Snapchat environment allows for Augmented Reality Lenses and Filters that we leverage to garner engagement from our audience and provide them a playful moment of interaction, while also serving vertical video ads with sound. Reddit is a unique platform in the sense that it allows us to tap into moments with contextual messaging, a dedicated tone of voice and style that suites the platform audience, and simpler creative that feels organically apart of the feed. Our platform engagement is consistently strong across all of our platforms as we ensure to include strong prompts and call to actions to give the audience an opportunity to engage with our posts. This helps to continue to build a strong target audience that is interested in seeing our brand and content.
Most of the time, we use a scheduling tool in our social media management platform to pre-schedule any posts that need to be published before or after normal business hours; however, during very high jackpot runs, or if we have a big jackpot winner in California, we switch to real-time, after-hours posting. Depending on the situation, we engage with players directly in post comments and private messages to answer questions or address issues. We utilize a pre-approved response matrix for common questions to assure accurate, vetted and consistent replies and information. These community management interactions typically occur during our normal business hours.
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Delaware Lottery
Our social media is managed by OneMagnify, which facilitates the Delaware Lottery’s social media marketing strategy, post creation and publishing, and performance analysis. OneMagnify works with teams across various areas of the Delaware Lottery to coordinate social promotions and upcoming campaigns.
Platforms and Content
Content is posted on both Facebook and Instagram, with slight edits made to account for platform capabilities, such as removing links from Instagram captions. Facebook is utilized more frequently, with features like Facebook Live and Facebook Events. We typically post once per day on both platforms. Our audience prefers Facebook over Instagram. Posts celebrating Delaware Lottery’s “Big Winners” are made once per week. Occasionally, there are ad-hoc posts spotlighting big jackpots or unclaimed jackpots.
We engage with our audience daily, responding to positive comments and answering questions in comments and direct messages. Complaints are directed to customer service if additional assistance is needed.
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Florida Lottery
The Florida Lottery’s social channels are handled by multiple teams. Our Marketing team, along with our advertising agency partner, handles all our organic and paid content across Facebook, Instagram and partially on X. Our Communications team owns the Lottery’s X account, along with managing LinkedIn. The YouTube channel is also managed by Marketing.
Platforms and Content
The Florida Lottery primarily posts on Facebook, Instagram and X for consumer facing messaging and marketing. Overall, the same content goes out across these three channels, with slight variances in content so that we are best utilizing the strengths of each platform and optimizing for top performing content. We also have a YouTube channel where we repost drawings and TV spots, and LinkedIn for more industry-related content, such as beneficiary messaging, Lottery news, job openings, etc. We typically post once a day on each of our platforms; we focus on creating engaging content and not oversaturating our social channels with multiple pieces of content each day. We have created posts to go live after-hours; this is done typically under urgent requests such as office closures due to weather or major societal events.
We do not engage with our followers directly. If followers send a direct message to our Facebook page, they will be greeted with a chatbot that will send them pre-templated responses that will send them to informational pages on our official website. The Florida Lottery does not have full-time staff dedicated to community management, nor do we outsource this responsibility. Therefore, we are unable to engage regularly in-feed with our players.
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Georgia Lottery
We have a dedicated coordinator and director who oversee the Georgia Lottery’s socials in the Digital Communications Department.
Platforms and Content
We use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. Content is tailored to each platform’s strength and posting frequency varies; typically several times per week per platform. As for after-hours support, it depends on the situation. For major events like local jackpot wins, we may post after hours. We also monitor and respond to customer questions or complaints as needed, but not 24/7.
Hoosier Lottery
We have one dedicated social media specialist who manages all our social channels, including creating and scheduling content, monitoring and responding to comments. They are supported by our digital and creative teams, as well as our creative and media agency, for campaign-specific content and paid social support.
Platforms and Content
Each of our platforms has its own tailored voice and tone, and we prioritize platform-native content to drive performance. For example, what works on Meta does not translate on LinkedIn. A seasonal ticket launch may feature vibrant Reels and Stories on Instagram, a detailed product post with call-to-action on Facebook, and a brief visual teaser on X. Meanwhile, the same campaign may be absent from LinkedIn unless there’s a corporate or community angle.
Facebook is our primary platform for broad engagement and has the largest number of followers. We use it to share product announcements, winner awareness, promotional campaigns, event highlights, and retail partnerships. The audience skews slightly older, and we use a conversational tone. We post 5–6 times per week, often including static graphics, short videos, and reels, along with interactive content like comment-driven promotions to encourage participation.
Instagram is a highly visual platform with a lot of potential for growth and discoverability. This is ideal for showcasing our product, behind-the-scenes moments, trending short-form videos, seasonal campaigns, and influencer collaborations. Stories and Reels are used frequently to highlight promotions, product releases and events in a quick and engaging way. We post 5-6 times per week, using a mix of static images, Reels and Stories to stay dynamic and visually engaging.
X is primarily used for retail promotions, sponsorship updates, and cross-promotion of content from other platforms. Due to the character count, we tailor our tone to be concise and slightly more casual. This platform is also used for winner awareness and overall campaign messaging. We post 4-5 times per week and repost tagged content when appropriate.
YouTube is home to daily drawings, longer-form campaign content, and past episodes of Hoosier Millionaire. We also use it to cross-post Instagram Reels on YouTube Shorts for additional awareness and engagement. Due to the type of content that goes up on this platform, we post several times a day, seven days a week.
LinkedIn is focused on corporate storytelling, careers, responsible gaming, community impact, and industry recognition. We rarely promote games or products here; instead, we highlight internal culture, company or employee award wins, retailer partnerships, and CSR efforts. We post 4-5 times per month, ensuring all content has a clear professional or beneficiary-driven angle.
We do share content after hours with pre-produced and approved assets for jackpot updates, campaigns and other content. Big jackpot wins are typically promoted the day after the drawing. We want to ensure the proper steps are taken by our security and internal team before making public announcements on large jackpot wins.
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Idaho Lottery
One person handles all organic content – our social media and customer marketing specialist, who is in the Marketing Department. Paid content and ad placement is handled by our strategy/creative team.
Platforms and Content
We primarily use Facebook and Instagram. Facebook is our hub for static content, paid promotions, and livestreams, while Instagram focuses more on dynamic content like Reels, Stories, and short-form video. To drive the most engagement, we adapt our content to fit the unique strengths of each platform and how our audiences interact with them. We maintain a fairly consistent presence throughout the week, posting daily or every other day to both platforms.
We often schedule posts outside of regular office hours to capture peak engagement times. Our social media specialist also monitors comments and messages after hours and on weekends/holidays, typically responding within a few hours to ensure players feel supported.
Illinois Lottery
The Illinois Lottery has a dedicated social media manager, who sits in the Marketing Department and manages the organic social media accounts. The role works cross-functionally to deliver joined-up outcomes: our product leads share new game content, PR identifies recent winners to feature, and our in-house creative studio helps bring content ideas to life.
Platforms and Content
We are active on Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube, and as of this year, TikTok. While the themes of our posts are similar across our platforms, we tweak our content to match what consumers expect to see on each social channel. For example, people go to X to get news and other updates in real time, which is why we share quick text-only posts with draw reminders and “check your numbers” messages. That way, our content is aligned with the need for succinct and timely information. We post multiple times a day on the legacy social accounts, and once or twice per week on TikTok.
After hours, we have pre-approved creative ready to go in the event of website issues that might happen, or if there is a significant jackpot win in-state. With wins, we typically wait until the next morning to announce them to verify the prize amount, irrespective of the day of the week. We also respond directly to players within our posts and private messages. We use templated responses for FAQs that have already been vetted by legal and RG that allow us to address most feedback promptly.
Iowa Lottery
There are two Iowa Lottery teams that work on social media. One team handles our organic social media posts and a separate team handles our paid media on social. We’ve strategically divided up our approach to differentiate the voices involved.
Platforms and Content
The Iowa Lottery currently has a presence on Facebook, X, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn and Threads. We also maintain a blog site at ialotteryblog.com. We utilize a social media management tool that helps us effectively make posts and analyze their performance. We differentiate the wording and format within our posts to tailor the content strategies for the different social media platforms. We post information daily on our social media pages and post blog entries twice a week.
Our organic social media content is handled by our External Relations team and is conversational and authentic, driven by real-time events and interactions with people. The content features the latest winning tickets, winners, answers to players’ questions, and content from our blog, which we share across social media to help provide factual content. Our paid media on social is handled by the Iowa Lottery’s Marketing team and advertising agencies. That content generally is commercial in tone and addresses the lottery’s largest sales initiatives, such as a featured game, a new promotion, or the current giant jackpot.
The External Relations team time-releases some posts to provide new content on the weekends or holidays when we are not in the office. And when there is breaking news that requires updates and active monitoring (such as a giant jackpot) we will monitor our accounts and provide updated content as events occur. This team also directly engages with players and the public on our social media pages because the whole point of being on social is to encourage conversations, right?
In the off hours when there are not breaking-news events, we generally just lightly monitor our social media sites to guard against and shut down spam and scam attempts when criminals come to our pages to try to reach people with their fraudulent messages. We delete the criminals’ comments and posts and block their accounts to try to prevent future fraudulent behavior. It has been alarming in the past handful of months to see the increase in spam and scam attempts on our social media pages. It is a trend that is continuing, and we have to block fraudulent accounts nearly every day, if not multiple times a day.
Kansas Lottery
One person in our Public Affairs Department handles our social media content.
Platforms and Content
Facebook and Instagram are where we have traditionally seen the most engagement, and so we have turned our focus to those platforms, as well as YouTube with our digital content. The Meta platforms are where the images, general information and graphics go. YouTube is for our videos, which we sometimes to cross-post to Facebook as well. We post on Facebook and Instagram almost daily; YouTube is weekly. We are moving to get more short-form content for Facebook/Instagram Reels and YouTube shorts. We used to do a weekly Live show that streamed on both Facebook and YouTube simultaneously.
We do technically have a Snapchat account, but we have quit using it due to lack of engagement and a difficulty keeping our content for the appropriate crowd. We also have an X account, which we do monitor for activity but we do not post much on there.
If available after hours, our social specialist will make a post about a big win. It’s part of the job with social media, and there will always be things happening you may need to address. We do engage directly with customers across platforms; we probably get daily messages from Meta and weekly messages on X and YouTube. We can typically handle these interactions without need to escalate the issue.
Kentucky Lottery
Our organic and paid social strategy is led by our senior marketing specialist – media services, who works closely with our PR agency of record to develop creative concepts and content calendars. Internally, we manage select creative elements, such as winner awareness and engagement content, in collaboration with our Communications Department and our communications content producer-strategist.
Platforms and Content
The Kentucky Lottery primarily engages on Facebook and Instagram, with additional presence on X, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Threads, and YouTube. We tailor content by collaborating with our PR agency of record to identify platform-specific trends, understand audience preferences, and craft content that resonates. Our posting strategy prioritizes 1–2 posts per day on Facebook and Instagram to maximize engagement.
We will post after hours as needed. Following a Kentucky-largest Powerball jackpot win in April on a Saturday, we created and posted content by Sunday. We also engage with players on social media, addressing questions and concerns in partnership with our products team. Responses are provided to the best of our knowledge, with referrals to our helpline or support email when necessary.
Loto-Québec
We have a dedicated social team from our Marketing Department. Each social media manager is responsible for their own product portfolio.
Platforms and Content
Once a day, we use our Facebook content to advertise lotteries and to reach regular players. Posts may be about brand awareness, new products, big jackpots, winners, major draw results, and promotions. Twice a week, we use our Instagram content to advertise lotteries to reach younger adult players. These posts may be about brand awareness, lifestyle videos, new products, winners and promotions. We engage in comments and direct messages on both platforms, and will also post on weekend mornings after a big win. For YouTube, we run lottery videos as needed, for winners, draw results and live lottery events (for example, Plinko, Roue de fortune and Mega 360). We will soon be launching a TikTok account.
Louisiana Lottery
Social is handled primarily one communications specialist, supervised by the director of communications with backup as needed by another communications specialist. We work in tandem with a staff graphics designer to create content and the rest of our team to come up with promotions. Social media management responsibilities fall within our Marketing Department.
Platforms and Content
Facebook is where most of our players reside on social media. We share game information, videos, jackpot alerts, winners, events and promotions. X is our next-largest platform, which we use for nugget-style news and announcements, including winners, game information, promotions, jackpot alerts and daily drawing results. Instagram is primarily visual content, including winner photos, jackpot alerts, etc. We post on all three platforms several times daily. YouTube contains an archive of playlists for a variety of videos. For it and LinkedIn, we post several times a month. We do schedule posts over the weekend and after hours, but generally don’t make live posts during those times unless deemed necessary depending upon topic/news.
Maryland Lottery
Our digital manager, in the Creative Services Department (which is essentially the Marketing Department), handles the day-to-day management of our social media properties, including planning and scheduling content and moderating comments on our posts. Our creative agency creates the assets for our posts and our media agency handles the paid social campaigns.
Platforms and Content
We are active on Facebook, Instagram, X and YouTube. On all platforms, we are focused on increasing awareness of the Maryland Lottery and our new products and promotions. On Facebook and Instagram, we have content that is more engagement-based, encouraging users to watch a video, comment on a post or click a link. On Instagram, it’s important to provide content in a format that can be posted to Instagram Stories, where many users spend a lot of their time, and we are able to add engaging elements to Stories like polls, reaction sliders and buttons and countdowns.
After-hours posts are necessary if there a big jackpot ticket has been sold in the state, if there is an issue with winning numbers being posted, or there’s another large-scale player-facing issue that we need to address. We respond to player comments when appropriate. If a player has a legitimate question or concern, or they are just showing support, we will respond to these comments accordingly. Sometimes players use the comments section of our social posts as a platform to complain, and we typically do not respond to these comments in order to prevent unproductive exchanges. If these unproductive conversations do occur, we try to move them to a direct/private message so that this is not happening for all followers to see and chime in on.
Massachusetts Lottery
The Mass Lottery social media channels are managed by our social media coordinator, who maintains our content calendar and creates and schedules organic posts. Members from the Communications, Marketing, Creative and Product Management teams contribute to the success of our social platforms.
Platforms and Content
Our social content is centered on winning stories, our lottery products and our promotional campaigns. We try to find a local angle to accompany posts about our products. With the most similar content on Facebook, Instagram and X, we aim to post two to three times per day, both in-feed and stories. Our live content, including drawings and events, are posted on Facebook and YouTube, with recorded links of our drawings posted to X. In addition to live content, YouTube hosts all of our paid advertising video content that is created in-house. We also use TikTok. We cross-populate content across our channels, apart from LinkedIn. Managed by our HR Department, LinkedIn’s content focuses on job opportunities, staff volunteer work, and engagement with employees on their professional accomplishments.
Our social media coordinator monitors our social channels in the evenings and weekends for customer questions and complaints. For winners and jackpots, the Mass Lottery waits to comment publicly until the following morning.
Michigan Lottery
In Michigan, our PR team handles all social media.
Platforms and Content
We are active on Facebook, Instagram, X and LinkedIn. We do not have a firm guideline on how often we post; we use a newsroom model and let winner content dictate our schedule. In the bio section of our pages, we are clear about when staff are available and do not provide after-hours engagement. Although, during jackpot runs we may have someone staff social to ensure players are not having issues purchasing tickets.
Minnesota Lottery
One dedicated person on the Digital Marketing team is our social media coordinator and gathers content from multiple internal teams like Public Affairs, Sales, Marketing, etc. The coordinator also works with our ad agency externally for other content for our campaigns.
Platforms and Content
We strategically tailor content across platforms, aligning with our content buckets and optimizing for each channel’s unique strengths. We post nearly every day on Facebook and X, five times a week on Meta Stories (Facebook and Instagram), and 2-3 times per week on Instagram in-feed. We post on Snapchat, LinkedIn and YouTube when we have appropriate content to share (event stories, job postings, campaign videos, etc.) Our after-hours posts are more events-related. Direct messages and comments are monitored and responded to after hours for questions/complaints.
Mississippi Lottery
The Communications Department oversees social media. Our VP of communications and social media works very closely with the communications specialist to run the social media accounts.
Platforms and Content
The Mississippi Lottery utilizes Facebook, Instagram, X and recently added TikTok. We also have a LinkedIn profile, but that is not geared towards players; it’s strictly for an industry presence and human resources recruitment. We are well aware of what generational demographics are engaging on what platforms, so we attempt to tailor our content based on that information. For example, winner awareness photos with checks/players perform ridiculously well on Facebook, while our silly TikTok trend videos perform well on Instagram Reels and TikTok. We post 3-5 times a day on all social media channels, but we are currently having discussions about changing the frequency.
We currently do not engage after hours. We do schedule content to run after hours and we have automated messages to inform players we will get back to them within operating hours. It has been a topic of discussion for the communications team to implement real-time communication/posts protocols for local jackpot winners.
Missouri Lottery
We have one dedicated social media position in the Communications Department.
Platforms and Content
On Facebook, in addition to traditional fare like winner announcements, promotion hype and how-to-play videos, we offer players multiple giveaways every month. Prizes range from T-shirts to product to premium Missouri Lottery swag. We generally post the same content on X as we do on Facebook, although giveaways are not held on the platform – we provide links to giveaways via X. Instagram allows us to leverage more trending content, and we love to throw our ball mascots into the mix. Links to Facebook giveaways are featured here in our Stories.
We post daily on each platform, typically multiple times a day on weekdays, but there is no predetermined frequency. However, we do our best to spread non-time-sensitive posts across the planning calendar to help alleviate platform throttling on busy days and to provide a presence on slower days. We don’t typically post after hours. We do have a plan in place for when and what to communicate if a national jackpot is hit here, but we do not address normal, day-to-day issues after hours. Those who direct message us during those times receive an auto reply with an after-hours message, and we address the question the next working day.
Montana Lottery
Our content team of two in our Marketing Department manage the Montana Lottery’s lottery social media accounts. For our Sports Bet Montana accounts, this team assists the SBM coordinator.
Platforms and Content
For Montana Lottery Social media accounts:
Our content strategy is tailored to each platform to maximize reach and engagement. For Instagram, we create engaging, humorous Reels that resonate with our younger audience, showcasing the Lottery’s personality. Facebook and X serve as primary channels for sharing essential information, including jackpot updates and new game announcements. While we occasionally share lighter content on Facebook, we generally keep it factual to align with our older audience’s preferences. For all three, we aim to post at least five days a week, with anything from 1 to 4 posts daily depending on any big wins or jackpots happening that day. Our YouTube channel primarily serves as an archive for past and current commercials, Commission meeting recordings, and a resource for our sales agents (including Sports Betting 101 videos and training materials for onboarding new store employees and teaching them how to operate our terminals). On LinkedIn, we emphasize professional news and financial milestones, like our recent post about Sports Bet Montana paying over $10 million in sales commissions.
For Sports Bet Montana social media accounts:
We use the same four primary platforms to connect with our audience. Facebook and Instagram provide a broader audience, and we will post general events for the week usually 3-5x per week. X is a much more sports niche audience, so we post more on that platform; it has the most engagement out of all our social accounts. We also aim for one to three cross-promotional posts per month across all our accounts. This helps reinforce that Sports Bet Montana is a product of the Montana Lottery, reminding players of our direct connection.
While our typical posting schedule is during weekday business hours, we do extend this to after-hours or weekends for specific content like promotions or holidays. An exception to this is Amber Alerts, which we post immediately whenever they occur. Regarding direct engagement, our social platforms are equipped with automated messages that let players know we’ll address their questions at the start of the next business day.
Nebraska Lottery
There is a team of three marketing and communications specialists in our Marketing Department that handle social media. One specialist is responsible for Facebook, another for X and the third responds to direct messages from all platforms. Our advertising agency, Smith Kroeger, produces our paid social content and advertising.
Platforms and Content
Our Facebook page has the largest audience, and we regularly offer our fans exclusive giveaways for lottery tickets, merchandise, and event passes. X is where we post shorter-form video and winner updates, while Instagram is the primary channel for the Nebraska Lottery Street Team. They share updates from events and outings primarily around Omaha and Lincoln. On all our channels we typically post three to five times a day with a combination of paid and organic posts.
We post our business hours on our social profiles and have autoresponders set for most direct messages. For the most part we try to respond to players during business hours. All our social accounts are monitored after hours, so we can post information outside of business hours when appropriate.
New Mexico Lottery
The communications manager in the Marketing Department primarily handles social media, but the entire marketing team contributes with graphics and content ideas. Social media ideas even come from other departments, like Gaming Products, with suggestions on product features, promotions and sales, including new retailer announcements and wheel spin events.
Platforms and Content
Our Facebook and Instagram content almost always mirror one another. Contesting can be slightly different due to the rules; however, the calendar is identical. YouTube is used for content that we want to go beyond Facebook and Instagram. Some of our fans do not have social media, so we use YouTube to ensure everyone has an opportunity to watch and participate in things like live events. LinkedIn is the most recent addition to our social presence, and is used to advertise job postings as well as share the fun and games that happen inside the Lottery, like team building events.
We try to post according to peak times. We use Meta Business Suite, which suggests times that will get our posts maximum exposure. Generally, this is at 10am or 6pm, so they can fall outside of traditional business hours. Winner awareness typically is posted after hours. The inbox is monitored for emergencies; however, responses to direct messages are typically during regular business hours because peer and/or management review or advice is sometimes needed before sending a response.
New York Lottery
We have a purpose-built team at our advertising agency dedicated to social strategy, content, influencers, community management and integrated paid/organic reporting. The team is overseen by our digital advertising supervisor and director of marketing.
Platforms and Content
We post a mix of long- and short-form content on Instagram Reels 3-4 times a week; at the same rate, we use native features and stickers on Instagram Stories. On Threads, we post meme and text-only style, plus polls, once per week. Once or twice weekly, we post shorts to YouTube and game updates or trending topics on X. We do provide after-hours posts and community management as needed, including engaging directly with players at times.
North Dakota Lottery
Two North Dakota Lottery staff members have access to our social accounts. The primary is the marketing director, who handles 99% of the interactions, posts, etc. Our ad agency also has limited access to our Facebook page; their main objective is to post scripted (previously approved) content calendars for promotions or other campaigns. Per the ND Attorney General’s office request, the ad agency is not allowed to respond to posts nor allowed to post anything without prior ND Lottery approval.
Platforms and Content
Facebook is used just about daily; X is rarely ever used. We don’t post after hours. If North Dakota ever has a Powerball or Mega Millions jackpot winner, we have a lot of security protocols to get through before we could post much of anything on social media. Even prizes of $100,000 or more do not hit the platform until a couple of security checks are completed. We do engage with questions or if we are direct messaged from a player. Depending on the questions, the player may be asked to call our office or email our lottery email account.
Ohio Lottery
We were fortunate to be able to hire an employee dedicated solely to creating content calendars, monitoring our channels, and running social promotions. Our Communications team is cross-trained and connected to the monitoring platform, so other members of the department can create and add posts and respond to customers as well. Our Marketing Department works directly with our agencies on planning for any paid social content.
Platforms and Content
We often post daily on all our platforms: Facebook, Instagram, X, and YouTube; calendars are created a month in advance. In addition to the draw numbers automated posts, we post product-centric content, operations updates, jackpot hits and gamified content to keep players engaged. Differentiating posts depends on the type of content we are posting; for example, we typically don’t differentiate between Facebook and Instagram posts. One exception is YouTube and/or link-based content. We share our monthly In the Know YouTube video via text post on Facebook and X and share it via story on Instagram with the link and a call to action. We use X differently than Facebook and Instagram, and do not usually include gamified posts since we have seen our followers mostly use X for daily numbers, winner news and customer service.
We engage with customers and post mostly during business hours. Anything that comes in and needs a response is responded to within 24 hours. If there is a situation outside of business hours that affects customers’ ability to purchase tickets or cash winning tickets or any kind of technical difficulty that affects customers, we will utilize our social channels to inform players after hours.
Oklahoma Lottery
We have a dedicated social media content creator whose job is to strategize, organize and create the content. Two others on the Marketing team assist in all aspects of that job while also doing most of the scheduling, ad placing and reporting on those assets. Honestly, the marketing director is also knee deep in it all the time too. It’s a real team effort in the Marketing Department!
Platforms and Content
We’re active on Facebook, Instagram, X, Threads, TikTok, Pinterest and YouTube. Some platforms are still in the early stages for us, but we’ve set both short- and long-term goals for each based on where we see potential to grow and connect with different audiences. Right now, a lot of our content is shared across platforms with some tweaks – whether that’s formatting for vertical video, changing up the caption style, or adjusting tone based on the platform’s personality. As we continue to learn what performs best where, we’re working toward a more tailored approach for each one. On our bigger platforms like Facebook and Instagram, we’re posting daily; sometimes even multiple times a day. Our overall goal is to hit between 5 to 10 posts a week per platform, depending on what’s happening with promotions, trends, or player engagement.
We do engage directly with players and also post after hours. We try to respond to as many players as we can, especially if they are needing assistance. That said, we don’t engage in the troll comments.
Ontario Lottery and Gaming
We have a social media team of three, plus one director, who are part of the Paid Media & Social Media team. We also work with our internal and external agencies to produce content, as well as with influencers.
Platforms and Content
We are active on Facebook, Instagram, X and YouTube. Outside of these we also use Reddit and Snapchat for advertising purposes. We also have new channels on Bluesky and Threads that we haven’t started utilizing yet. How often we post depends on the platform. Some are only once a week (those for our ILC games), whereas OLG, Proline and PlaySmart can be once a day or more. Each platform has its own content to mirror the brand voice and personality. Some posts are more informational whereas others are used to drive engagement and contain a call to action.
We will post live from events after hours, particularly to Instagram. We also engage directly for questions and complaints through our customer service teams; they monitor our social channels for customer/consumer questions so that they can respond. Members of the social media team each take one-month turns monitoring and collaborating with the customer service team for responses during business hours and after hours.
Oregon Lottery
We have a small, dedicated team of two to three individuals to handle the bulk of our social listening, engagement, posting, research and strategy. One staff person performs the majority of the tasks needed to maintain a vibrant and valuable platform. We also utilize a social media management tool (Sprout Social) to help minimize the resources necessary to regularly post and respond to customer/user direct messages, comments and mentions within a maximum window of 20 hours. Our average response time is one hour or less during business hours and three hours or less outside of business hours.
Platforms and Content
At the Oregon Lottery, we utilize Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Anything we post is tailored or built specifically for that channel. We seldom recycle content across platforms without first adapting for audience, copy adjustments, image sizes, etc. We occasionally post on Threads to gauge Oregonian engagement on that platform. We publish paid advertising only on TikTok and monitor our X account for activity, but do not use that channel for any posting or engagement.
Facebook continues to be our highest engagement platform. We post 10+ times per week on average (spread between newsfeed and video/Reels) and also use regular paid advertising. Our content leans heavily into relevance and seasonality to drive engagement and support product and beneficiary campaigns. The content that most routinely drives engagement/visibility are digital “giveaway” posts linking to free enter-to-win opportunities on our website, winner stories, and “slice of life” stories (often related in some manner to one of our six beneficiaries) that infotain with some local history or interesting tidbits. We also share animated/interactive content that highlights our products with quizzes, trivia, demos, videos, etc. Often, we weave Safer Play/RG reminders into posts to more seamlessly connect with our players and to avoid coming off as judgmental or clinical.
Our second highest engagement channel is Instagram, where we post organically eight to 10 times per week. Much like Facebook, we use Instagram as an efficient, cost-effective advertising tool. Our organic posts tend to be more frequent (15+ weekly) when we are between advertising campaigns, as we are careful about value/oversaturation of our brand/messaging. While the content is built specifically for Instagram, many of the tactics are the same as Facebook described above.
We are prohibited from using TikTok on any state government-owned devices, so we do not have an official account for any organic posting or customer engagement. However, we do create interstitial advertising on this popular platform. We follow trends and invest time in research to make sure our ads and messaging are appropriate for the channel and relevant to our segmented audiences. Those ad units (flighted through Pollinate, our agency partner) maintain nearly double industry benchmarks in terms of engagement on TikTok.
Posts to LinkedIn are managed by our PR team with limited postings from our HR staff when career opportunities arise. We have tested LinkedIn as a brand advertising platform with limited success thus far, so this channel is used to post organic content (1-3 posts weekly on average) focused on agency news, celebrating beneficiary connections, and a broad array of Oregon topics. Engagement spikes outside of regular postings are often tied to sharing, mentions and amplification from Oregon Lottery corporate and beneficiary partners.
Pennsylvania Lottery
We have one in-house social media manager who reports to the deputy director of digital marketing, and a social media team within our advertising agency who help with strategy, design, scheduling and community management. We also work with the Lottery’s communications team on content and responding to questions.
Platforms and Content
We post 2-4 times daily on Facebook; content is geared toward the current generation of lottery players. Winner awareness posts drive the most engagement. On Instagram, we post one or two times daily; content is geared toward the next generation of lottery players. We have continued success increasing our followers and engagement through sports ticket giveaways on this platform. We use paid ads on Snapchat, geared toward the next generation of lottery players and attracting new online players. LinkedIn has one or two posts a week; the content is geared toward businesses, thought leaders and employees. We are not actively posting on X, but we do monitor/listen for brand mentions.
Most of our organic posts occur during business hours, but we do occasionally post after-hours and on weekends to promote high jackpots or a local winner. We generally do not engage with players after-hours unless there is an issue that we need to communicate to players.
Puerto Rico (Lotería Electrónica)
Social media is managed by a dedicated team within our advertising agency’s Digital Department, which is responsible for developing and executing our online engagement strategies. This team works collaboratively to ensure consistent messaging, timely content delivery, and active interaction with our audience across platforms.
Platforms and Content
We mainly use Facebook and Instagram. On Instagram, our focus is on visual and interactive content, such as trivia and games that encourage user participation. Unlike Facebook, we avoid posting winning numbers on the Instagram feed to maintain the interest of our younger audience; instead, we share them through Stories. Live drawings are streamed exclusively on Facebook. We publish 2 to 3 times a day on Facebook and at least once a day on Instagram. We regularly post outside of business hours, especially after the daily drawings, to share the winning numbers just minutes after the draw takes place. This ensures players have access to timely information.
Rhode Island Lottery
We have one dedicated person who manages the social media content calendar, including daily posting, monitoring, and scheduling. However, social media is very much a collaborative effort. A team contributes to content creation – including images, reels and contests – to ensure our posts are creative, timely, and aligned with larger campaigns. Any community engagement or feedback that requires response is also handled as a shared responsibility when needed, ensuring prompt and appropriate communication with our players.
Platforms and Content
Facebook, Instagram and X typically feature the same core content cross-posted across all three platforms, such as new games, promotions, or winner highlights. However, we adapt our approach slightly per platform. On Instagram, we lean more into visual storytelling – sharing photos or short videos from events in real-time through Stories and Reels, and leveraging collaborations with local influencers or partners when appropriate. Facebook is our most interactive platform for contests and giveaways (“comment to win”), and we’ve had great success with Facebook Live. One standout example was our 50th Anniversary Live event, where we dug into a birthday cake on camera to reveal winners’ names in real time. This drew a highly engaged audience. On YouTube, we focus on evergreen and official content: winning number drawings for The Numbers and Wild Money games, and playlists for commercials, winner stories and promotional videos to give players a centralized place to view Rhode Island Lottery creative.
Across platforms, we typically post at least once per day, and occasionally twice, depending on current promotions, winner announcements, or event recaps. Each channel serves a slightly different role in our communication strategy, helping us build community, showcase winners, promote games, and drive engagement through tailored content formats. We do post after hours when needed, especially for time-sensitive promotions at events. We also maintain after-hours monitoring of our social channels. If an issue arises that requires immediate attention – such as a customer concern, a fake profile impersonating the Lottery, or any potential security threat – we act quickly to report, respond and escalate as appropriate.
South Dakota Lottery
Our Communications team handles our social media platforms.
Platforms and Content
The South Dakota Lottery’s Facebook account is still our bread and butter, and attracts the most engagement among players. We typically use Facebook and Instagram to celebrate winners, market instant ticket launches and offer jackpot awareness posts. We have also found a lot of success using Stories on both of these platforms. We also utilize social media for beneficiary awareness and responsible gambling. We use X less, but it is used to break news. If we have something along the lines of a jackpot winner or a game change, we will share this information on X, as typically the media engages with that content most. We are also active on YouTube, and are monitoring the popularity of other platforms such as BlueSky and Threads to see if it would be valuable to expand
If we have a big winner or any other breaking news, we will provide after-hours posts. We typically don’t engage with players after hours, but we do have an automated direct message that alerts them that we will respond during normal business hours.
Tennessee Education Lottery
Social media management lies within the Advertising and Marketing Department. There are two staff members who work with the Lottery’s advertising agency to develop and post content.
Platforms and Content
Tennessee Education Lottery (TEL) social media content pillars include winner awareness, game promotion, responsible gaming, trivia contests/gamification, beneficiary awareness, TEL history, and other entertaining and informative content. The overall goal is to provide an entertaining and engaging experience for the user and to grow the Lottery’s player base. To effectively post content across these different channels, we adapt our approach based on each platform’s unique audience, tone and content formats. On Facebook, our primary platform, content is the most robust as this audience trends toward engaging with both written and visual content. Engagement is encouraged through interactive trivia contests, open-ended fun questions and giveaways. On Instagram, we use a more visually-driven approach with a more relaxed tone. Stories and Reels are utilized to further engage users, and trivia contests have proven quite popular. Finally, X is used for shorter, more concise content and breaking news, while YouTube has proved to be a reliable platform for beneficiary awareness in addition to serving as the home of in-state drawings.
The TEL schedules daily posts across all platforms, averaging approximately 25-30 posts per month. Real-time posts are typically focused on winners. We also schedule posts for after hours and are prepared to activate winner posts as needed. The Lottery engages directly with players, primarily on Facebook, during normal business hours.
Texas Lottery
The Lottery’s social media specialist manages the scheduling, creation and publishing of all social media content. Our A/V specialist, multimedia communications specialist and brand strategy coordinator all produce most of the video content for our social channels. In addition, the entire Media Relations team monitors our social platforms while on-call during designated evenings and weekends.
Platforms and Content
Our Facebook, Instagram and X channels primarily feature similar content, including promotions for draw games and scratch ticket games, jackpot updates, and stories about recent lottery winners. On LinkedIn, our focus shifts to organizational messaging, such as agency updates and recruitment efforts. YouTube serves as a hub for our video content, offering monthly game highlights, drawing footage, historical features and “how to play” tutorials, which are some of our most popular videos. We typically publish two to three pieces of content per platform each day. After hours, we do always have someone on-call, so we will make sure to post about jackpot wins and answer any customer questions or complaints.
Virginia Lottery
For all organic content, we have a dedicated social media specialist on the Communications and Customer Relations team, but it is a collaborative role that works with the rest of the CCR team along with partners in Marketing, Sales, HR, etc. We also have a digital coordinator on the Marketing team who focuses on paid content.
Platforms and Content
We use Facebook, Instagram, X, Threads, YouTube and LinkedIn; we also have a BlueSky account that we have not begun using. The Meta accounts along with X often have the same content shared to them, with slight variations. On Facebook, X and Threads, we can utilize linked content – particularly to exciting news coverage of large winners. We also do a monthly Facebook Live show (“Friday Funday”) that allows us to talk about new products, giveaways, and build a small but loyal group of super fans. Instagram houses some unique Reels and, of course, Stories. YouTube is primarily used for housing our commercials, coverage of education events, and new product tutorials. We just crossed the mark for 10,000 subscribers! And we are exploring some new uses for YouTube – stay tuned!) We use LinkedIn to showcase both our mission as a Lottery and what makes us a Top Workplace for prospective candidates.
We typically post one to three times a day on Facebook, X, Instagram and Threads; YouTube as needed, and LinkedIn as needed or once a week.
We have posted after-hours about giant jackpot wins on occasion; however, we air on the side of caution in terms of verifying that a large win has occurred. By the time that goes through all of the proper channels, we end up with graphics that can be shared during normal business hours. We do provide customer relations primarily through our Facebook messages, but also respond to comments across any of the platforms as appropriate. Meaning, we don’t respond to every comment – such as ones complaining that we’re rigged or are simple “congratulations!” on winner posts. But when there’s a public question that gives us a good opportunity to educate our followers, or specific account issues with players, we’ll engage with those comments to try and help and build trust with our community. We also monitor comments for complaints about games not functioning correctly and use that data to report to other teams about problems they may not be aware of.
Washington’s Lottery
The assistant marketing director at Washington’s Lottery is responsible for reviewing and approving all content before it’s published. Our agency, VML, has a dedicated social media strategist who handles day-to-day posting, content calendar planning, and community management. This person manages the social accounts daily and proactively looks for opportunities to engage and build community with our audience through comments and direct messages, while also identifying culturally relevant topics we can tap into.
Platforms and Content
We are currently active on Instagram, Facebook, Threads, YouTube and Reddit. To maximize engagement, we tailor content to both platform best practices and audience demographics. For example, we prioritize Reels on Instagram due to higher engagement rates and use 4:5 aspect ratio for static posts – consistently aligning with the platform’s most recent updates and algorithm. On Threads, we focus on timely, concise copy that fits the platform’s conversational tone. Our content strategy also varies by audience. Organic content is designed for our “Mainstream Cool” segment (those already familiar with us or who are lottery fans), while paid content is geared towards attracting new users, which we define as our “Discovery Squad.” We make a point to use each platform’s native features to show we belong in those spaces, while also staying current with culture trends and algorithm shifts to ensure optimal content performance. For example, we use Instagram collab posts to boost reach and credibility and engage users with features like polls on Threads. We post at least 2-3 times per week across all our active platforms.
We will post after hours or on holidays if a big jackpot is rolling or gets hit; we also will occasionally post on weekends to promote any in-person sales activations that the Lottery team is doing. We will message directly with players, usually via direct messaging, if they have specific questions or complaints, or connect them with the appropriate person on the Lottery team who can help.
West Virginia Lottery
Our social media efforts are coordinated by our dedicated social media manager, who oversees content scheduling and publishing. Content creation is a collaborative process involving the Marketing team and our advertising partners, ensuring alignment with broader campaign strategies and creative goals.
Platforms and Content
We focus on maintaining a strong daily presence on Facebook, where we have our most significant following. To maintain consistency, the same marketing messages are generally shared across X, Instagram and Threads, unless we are running platform-specific campaigns or giveaways. In those cases, we tailor content to better suit the tone, features and audience behavior unique to each platform.
Most of our after-hours posts are prescheduled. However, we make exceptions for special circumstances such as major jackpot wins or product launches. Regarding customer engagement, we prioritize timely responses to questions and complaints. Our goal is always to provide helpful, solution-oriented communication. We find that direct, respectful engagement with players helps build trust and loyalty to the brand.
Wisconsin Lottery
The Marketing and Communications Department handles organic social media. Under the guidance of the marketing and communications supervisor, two marketing and communications staff members write all the content and create all graphic assets. Infrequently, interns will create video content at events, which is approved and placed by the department supervisor. A third member of the marketing and communications staff posts YouTube videos, when available.
Platforms and Content
Facebook is by far the largest of our social platforms, and we try to post to our Facebook news feed no more than twice daily. This strategy has helped increase our user engagement. There are days we break this rule, but that’s our goal. Often, we use Facebook and Instagram stories as an alternative option for content. For Instagram and X, we post two or three times daily, depending on what we have scheduled and what spontaneously pops up on any given day. The daily content for all three platforms are generally the same. Facebook posts are generally placed at 9am and noon. Posts on Instagram and X are usually at 8:30am, 10:30am and 12:30pm. We also use YouTube, but it is not a prominent part of our content strategy. Videos are posted when needed and are usually part of our agency media, created for new ad campaigns.
After business hours, social media is monitored daily, Monday through Friday, including occasionally during non-business hours and on the weekend. Urgent player questions are answered right away; otherwise, player questions are answered on Monday mornings. For extreme circumstances (e.g. large jackpots), extra attention is paid to social in case a jackpot is hit.
Wyoming Lottery
Our social media platforms are primarily managed by one in-house person with a couple other employees given admin access as needed should we need backup coverage. That person provides some of the creative used; the rest comes from our marketing vendor.
Platforms and Content
In our history, we have tried out a few different platforms and have focused on what we do best, while continuing to work on developing onto others. Our primary focus is Facebook, because our audience largely lives there and interacts with us on that page. Next is Instagram; while we’ve tried out a few different ideas with unique creative, for now we typically reuse the creative from Facebook and have also been testing out different ways to interact with our players via Stories. Although we still have an X page, this was not a heavily engaged channel in the past and we haven’t been regularly posting there. Our YouTube page is mostly used to house our commercials for linking with ads as needed.
We have tried to be as available as possible to get important news and updates out no matter what day or time, including weekends or holidays, because we know that is when people are on social and expect updates. We also use our social platforms as an arm of our customer service and keep a close eye on any messages that come in, particularly if we have a promotion running on the weekend. While we do not engage with every comment we receive, we do enjoy interacting with our players and have tried to answer questions and concerns as well as encourage back and forth fun/playful interactions to continue to grow our brand’s identity and trust. As far as troll and spam-like content, we have set page guidelines should someone use inappropriate or derogatory language which outlines that we may hide, delete or report users should they break those guidelines.
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