Hosting an Instagram Giveaway is great for engagement, growing your audience, getting user-generated content and attracting new users to your page.
How to plan a Instagram giveaway
1. Set a goal.
Start planning your giveaway by setting a goal. Giveaway goals can include promoting a new product or service, increasing followers, boosting engagement and more. Goal setting will make tracking the success of the giveaway easier.
2. Plan the giveaway and set parameters.
Next, you want to pick what kind of giveaway you would like to run and plan out the details. This includes setting a time and date on when your giveaway will end, the rules of the giveaway (i.e. if it will be open internationally or locally) and when and how a winner will be selected. Make sure the rules are clear and easy to understand.
TIP: Keep giveaway rules as simple as possible – the more complicated the steps are, the less likely people will want to enter.
3. Pick a prize.
This is the fun part! Your prize can be a gift card, a collection of products, an experience or a service. The key is to pick a prize that your target audience will want and enjoy. The prize should also reflect what your brand is about. This helps filter out any entrants who are just looking for a chance to win something and instead attract those with similar interests.
4. Promote the Instagram giveaway.
The next step is to launch and promote the giveaway. Reshare the giveaway on your Instagram Stories, and across platforms.
TIP: Ask entrants to reshare the giveaway post on their stories for a bonus entry.
5. Pick a winner.
The final step is to pick and contact the winner once the giveaway ends. Depending on what type of giveaway you are running, there are different ways you can select a winner. (i.e. for the “comment to win” giveaway, you can find a comment picker on Google to randomize and select a comment for you.).
TIP: Don’t announce the winner until you have verified that the account belongs to a real person, you have double-checked that they have met all the giveaway requirements and you have successfully contacted them for shipping details.
What kind of Instagram giveaway should I run?
Not sure what sort of giveaway to run? Here are 3 ideas:
Follow, like, and comment to win.
This is the most simple (and popular) type of Instagram giveaway to host. Simply instruct your entrants to follow, like and/or comment on the post to enter. To widen the reach of the giveaway, you can ask your entrants to tag a friend in the comments and let them know that entries are unlimited.
Collaborative giveaway
Collaborating with another Instagram account is a great way to reach untapped audiences and create multiple prize packages – making it more exciting for entrants. If you are planning to host a collaborative giveaway, find a user in a similar niche to collaborate with. This allows both accounts to gain followers from each other’s existing pool of followers that also share similar interests.
Photo caption contest.
Caption contests are a fun way to build your community, engage with your audience and encourage engagement between users. Simply post a picture and ask your entrants to comment on the perfect caption to match with the photo. You can judge the winner yourself or ask users to like their favourite caption and choose a winner based on who gets the most likes.
As always, it’s important to ensure your giveaway or contest follows any contest laws in your country. You may need to add extra disclaimers or even a skill-testing question for the winner to answer in order to be compliant.
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