Instagram giveaways are a powerful way to boost traffic on this platform. Running a giveaway on Instagram will not only help companies grow their audience, but it’ll also generate loyalty among followers. According to Small Business Trends, Instagram contests generate a 34% conversion rate. This is higher than any other type of content posted on social media by most brands.
That’s why many businesses have started to implement this trend on most social media channels like Facebook or YouTube. Accounts that regularly run Instagram giveaways show a 70% faster growth than those who don’t. This guide is here to reveal eight tips for running successful Instagram giveaways.
How Do Instagram Giveaways Work?
Instagram giveaways are created to increase followers or just drive traffic to a particular account. When running Instagram giveaways, influencers or companies post a picture by showing the contest’s rules. Usually, the only rule is to tag users and tell them to follow that specific account. Users must be real and not brand accounts. Although this is the most common version of Instagram giveaways, there are many other types.
Types of Instagram Giveaways
Running an Instagram giveaway could have different purposes, and the type of contest that someone chooses will highly depend on the goal they may have. Here are the types of Instagram giveaways:
Like/Comment
This is the most common one, and it only requires users to leave a comment or like in the contest’s picture. This one is beneficial for brands that only want to engage their current followers, and it’s pretty efficient because it’s simple; it doesn’t require too much effort from the followers.
Hashtag
Hashtag giveaways are also very simple since they only ask for users to use the giveaway’s particular hashtag. Yet, some brands add some complexity by telling their followers to post pictures in their feed when using the hashtag.
Polls
Polls are very helpful when companies need to find out their followers’ interests or any relevant data for their business. However, not many people like to compromise with surveys. So, offering a prize for participating in the poll is a good idea that incentives users.
Follow
This giveaway requires users to follow the brand’s account and tell their friends to follow it too. This is a great way to grow the audience of any company, and it’s a trendy type of giveaway.
Trivia
Trivia’s are a great way to know how much engagement there is from the followers. Yet, just like what happens with polls, people don’t usually like to be involved in Trivias. There might be more participation when adding a giveaway.
Caption
Caption giveaways are a fun way to engage users. These contests consist of writing a caption for a given picture. Users will also have the incentive of winning a prize. Therefore, they’d be more than happy to do it. This is also a great way to measure the engaged and active audience on the platform.
Tips to Run an Instagram Giveaway
There are certain tips and strategies to run a successful Instagram giveaway. The following list reveals the most outstanding tips to create an engaging Instagram contest:
1. Determine Goals
It’s vital to be clear about the desired goals because this will determine the giveaway’s efficacy. All strategies will be focused on that particular milestone. Most people’s goals are to get more followers or likes. However, when a brand already has a built-up base of followers, they need to keep them engaged. Contests are generally simple to maintain any audience happy. Therefore, it’s essential to spend some time evaluating the objectives.
2. Select a Relevant Price
This is another vital point to consider since it will motivate users to participate in the contest. Remember that followers are there for a reason, and they have a common interest in your niche. That’s why it’s essential to think about what is relevant to them. Let’s put this in simple words.
Imagine there’s a makeup and cosmetics account that needs more engagement, so they set up an Instagram giveaway for their followers, but the prize is a high-tech video game. It’s not that they don’t have followers who consider themselves gamers, but that group of people might be small. Their actual target audience is people who like makeup and cosmetics.
That’s why it’s so important to choose a relevant prize for that particular audience. That way, they’ll genuinely participate in the contest because they’re motivated.
3. Keep it Simple
There’s nothing more daunting for an Instagram user than participating in an elaborate contest. No matter how attractive the prize may be, followers won’t participate in contests that require extra complicated tasks. Therefore, when running an Instagram giveaway, consider keeping it simple, don’t add too many rules or actions. This way, it’ll be easier for users to participate.
4. Carefully Select Hashtags
When running an Instagram contest, people usually make the mistake of adding general hashtags like #contest or #giveaway. Although it may sound like a good idea because it’ll attract people interested in contests, it will just attract the wrong audience.
Remember that, in the end, conversions are the goals. Everything that’s done with marketing must eventually lead to sales. Therefore, it’s important to attract the right people, an audience that may later buy items or generate conversions. Be careful with the hashtags; it would be better to use the regular ones or create a personalized hashtag for the contest with the brand’s name.
5. Don’t Take Too Long to Reveal the Winner
Adding too many days to the contest may seem like it’s going to drive more traffic to the account, but it’s only going to daunt people. Some influencers and companies dare to make a two week or even a month-long contest because they think they’re offering a good reward.
However, that is also playing with people’s trust and engagement. A successful Instagram giveaway takes three to seven days as a maximum. This gives users time to participate and invite others without getting them tired.
6. Promote Your Contest as Much as Possible
Promotion plays a huge role in the efficiency of the Instagram giveaway. Without promotion, it’ll be hard to make people participate. It’s not about posting a single picture on Instagram about the contest.
Remember that this platform’s algorithm is constantly changing, and the only way to ensure the visibility of the contest is by promoting it everywhere and every day. This way, everybody will see the post, and maybe they’ll be interested in the contest. Try to post daily reminders of the giveaway on stories or posts.
7. Be Fair
It’s important to respect the audience and don’t lie about the contest. Some people maliciously post giveaways on Instagram that aren’t even real. In the end, they don’t share any winner or don’t have any prize to give, or they just give it to their relatives. Yes, they may benefit at first from these fake contests, but eventually, people will notice, and this will play against their reputation.
In order to avoid this from happening, it’s essential to be fair and give the reward to the actual winner. There are online tools that automate this process and aleatory select a winner for Instagram giveaways.
8. Avoid Loop Contests
Loop contests or loop giveaways are viral these days because it’s a simple way to give a big prize without investing too much money on it. Massive rewards are indeed appealing to people; however, they usually take too much effort from users.
Loop giveaways work this way: a group of influencers or companies get together to create a massive prize. Each one invests a certain amount, such as $100 to create a $1000 award, for instance. Then all members post a picture asking their fans to follow all accounts from each member of the loop. That’s the tricky part.
Although it sounds very appealing, people find it very tedious as well. Most users won’t even dare to participate because it takes too much time and effort.
Handy Tools to Run Instagram Giveaways
There’s no doubt that Instagram giveaways are a powerful way to drive traffic and increase followers. However, it takes too much time to select the winner manually. It involves reading every single comment or post and making sure that all participants followed the rules. That last part is usually the hardest one.
Yet, there’s a better solution to that, and there won’t need to go and read every single comment. Some handy tools automate this process, making it easier to select the winner. Here are some of them:
Easypromo
This tool has become popular because it’s very versatile. Easypromo can be used for different types of giveaways, from comment-to-enter contests to hashtag giveaways. With this app, users can automatically select winners.
What’s great about this app is that it filters participants by date and number of mentions. This way, comments out of the deadline will be excluded. Besides, if one of the requirements was to mention as many friends as possible, Easypromo will also detect that. This way, everything is automated, but most importantly, it’s a fair contest. The winner will be selected aleatory, and no one will complain about a fake giveaway.
Gleam
Gleam is very similar to Easypromo. It allows users to run Instagram giveaways with hashtag contests or comment-to-enter giveaways. The only difference is that it also incorporates website giveaways. This means that users can synchronize their Instagram contests with their website.
Wishpond
This tool is a led generator software that helps users create a hashtag for their contest and gather the information from participants. By inserting the generated hashtag on Wishpond, users will see the participants’ names and how they used the hashtag. Wishpond is also used for email subscriber-base engagement.
Shortstack
Shortstack is similar to Easypromo. It allows content creators to organize contests and promote them. This app is more popular on Facebook, but it can be used for Instagram contests as well. To find a winner in this app, users need to import all comments from the giveaway post and insert them in Shortstack.
Wrapping Up
Instagram giveaways have become so popular for a reason: they work! Many statistics have proven the efficacy of this trend. It’s not only because people genuinely want to participate, but also because more than 62% of followers who participate will invite others to take part too.
Some of the best ways to successfully crush an Instagram giveaway are to use the right hashtags, don’t take too long to announce the winner, and keep it simple.
About the author: Having a social media background and technical writing experience, Matt Robinson is a precious data-driven strategist and writer for HowSociable. He knows everything about social innovations and shares the information with his readers in a unique way.