11 Instagram Giveaway Ideas That Will Get You New Followers

An Instagram giveaway (or an Instagram contest) is a type of promotion involving a brand or creator gifting a product or service to an Instagram user. Users can enter the contest based on criteria defined by the giveaway organizer.

Here are some common reasons why brands throw giveaways on Instagram:

• To get new followers. Contests tend to bring in new viewers to your page.
• To engage their audience. Giveaways give your audience a chance to interact with your brand and your content—they bring in algorithm-friendly engagement in the form of likes and comments.
• To collect user-generated content. Contests can be a great opportunity to allow your audience to generate (free and creative) content for your page.
• To give back to their audience. Who would we be without our followers? Hosting an Instagram giveaway helps build your relationship with your audience and give them something in return for their support.

Start by deciding what the goal of your contest is. More followers? Increased sales numbers for a specific product or service?

Whatever it may be, figure out early on what you want to gain. That will make tracking the success of the contest far easier.

Clear rules are essential. When posting about the giveaway on Instagram, it may be best to include the deadlines and promotion guidelines in the caption. This will make them easy to find for your followers.

When sharing the contest on your website, a dedicated landing page, or other social media platforms, include any important rules upfront. If this isn’t possible, direct users to the giveaway post’s caption or wherever else the rules may be outlined.

If your contest is only open to certain geographic areas, be sure to include that information clearly.

This part should be fun! Decide what it is your followers will be competing for. It could be a product or assortment of products, a gift card, a service, or something else.

It’s wise to make sure the prize is related to your brand. General prizes like cash or Amazon gift cards will lure in random followers looking for a chance to win a quick buck. Offering products and prizes related to what your page revolves around is more effective—it ensures that anyone who enters and follows you for the contest is engaged with what it is you do.

Promote your Instagram giveaway as extensively as attainable. You’ll need to share it in your Instagram Tales in addition to some other social media platform your model makes use of. Put up in regards to the giveaway a number of instances (“One week left to enter,” “Final likelihood to enter,” and many others.) to make it possible for nobody misses it.

If you happen to’re working a contest, you’ll most likely need to see some concrete numbers proving the way it helps your web page’s site visitors.

Hootsuite is the proper useful resource to assist run and monitor contests. Contest posts will be scheduled with the Planner. Feedback will be tracked and answered within the Inbox, and mentions/hashtag utilization will be tracked through Streams.

Study extra about how Hootsuite may help you with Instagram contests (and, properly, your whole different social media efforts):

We’ve put collectively a free social media contest template that covers entry strategies, phrases of the giveaway, prize guidelines and disclosures about how winners might be chosen. If you happen to’re caught on correctly phrase your giveaway guidelines, begin right here.

Need a random comment picker to decide your Instagram contest winner? Try these.

If you happen to’re trying to find inspiration in your subsequent Instagram giveaway, hashtags are your greatest good friend: strive looking out #contest, #giveaway, #instagramcontest, #iggiveaway, #contestalert, and different related variations to search out thousands and thousands of examples of contests — or scroll down the record of inspiring examples beneath.

The next 11 giveaways display completely different contest methods, entry strategies, prize concepts and inventive methods to advertise your giveaway.

That is the only type of IG giveaway. Your viewers enters by interacting with the publish (by liking, commenting or sharing—and publish importantly, following). This makes getting into tremendous straightforward; it’s low-effort, high-reward.

This Instagram contest contains sharing to a narrative as a type of entry…

… and this one entails saving the publish…

…whereas this one asks customers to remark (and tag mates within the feedback part, extra on that later) to enter.

• Maintain your advertising and marketing objectives in thoughts when deciding your entry strategies. Do you need to achieve followers, get likes or feedback, up your “share” stats, and many others.?
• Attempt to preserve getting into so simple as attainable—complicated entry strategies are a recipe for low engagement. Make getting into your contest a lazy particular person’s dream.
• Take into consideration long-term development when selecting entry strategies. For instance, “wish to enter” solely will get you likes on a single publish, however “observe to enter” has the potential to earn you everlasting supporters.

Asking customers to tag their mates within the feedback—and counting every of these feedback as an entry—is principally an evil genius transfer. It implies that the entrant’s mates will get notified once they’re tagged, encouraging them to additionally enter the competition.

If one person tags three mates, these three mates tag three extra mates, and so forth, fairly quickly you’ll have taken over the world. In fact, not everybody will do that… we’re fairly sure that friendships have ended over serial tagging. Even so, it’s a really efficient technique for development.

Tagging a good friend is much less of an evil genius transfer when it really has one thing to do along with your model, or the giveaway itself. For instance, if you happen to’re giving freely a spa package deal for 2, you would possibly ask people to tag the particular person they’d carry with them in the event that they received.

This contest for shirts which are dyed with blueberries (cool) asks customers to “tag somebody who’s berry particular” within the feedback. They’re giving freely two shirts, seemingly one to the competition winner and one to the tagged good friend.

• Make tagging a good friend within the feedback a technique of entry to extend your giveaway’s attain.
• Take into consideration how tagging a good friend can present worth to the person, as properly—for instance, you may give away two prizes (so the tagged good friend additionally will get a prize). In any other case, you threat your contest merely annoying all of the tagged mates.

A brand new product launch is a good purpose to host a contest—it helps create hype across the product and share information of the launch along with your viewers.

Plus, a contemporary product routinely has extra perceived worth, even when the precise financial worth of the prize isn’t tremendous excessive (for instance, this giveaway of ready-to-eat boxed waffles).

• Think about incorporating contests into your advertising and marketing technique when launching new merchandise.
• Emphasize the “newness” of the product when selling this contest—if attainable, contemplate timing the competition so the winner is the primary particular person to expertise the product.

Collaborating with one other model or influencer routinely expands the attain of your giveaway as a result of the competition has the potential to succeed in each your followers and your collaborator’s followers.

You can associate with a model on each the competition promotion and the prize—for instance, within the contest beneath, a reusable takeout container model collaborated with a vegan meals producer, and the prize contains services or products from each manufacturers.

Or, a contest collaboration can simply embody a prize from one of many manufacturers, whereas the opposite collaborator merely promotes the competition—as is the case with this wedding ceremony registry firm x KitchenAid collab.

Both approach, an important think about any collaboration is that your collaborator’s model values align with your individual. Reusable containers and vegan meals producers each have the aim of sustainability, whereas the marriage registry firm and KitchenAid have crossovers of their industries.

• Associate with one other model to faucet into a brand new viewers in your giveaway.
• Make it possible for the model’s values align with your individual (along with this being a great apply generally, it additionally makes their followers extra more likely to love your content material).
• If it is sensible, make the prize embody one thing from each manufacturers.

You don’t actually need an excuse to have a contest—individuals love free stuff at any time of 12 months—however if you happen to can have a good time a vacation or event with a contest, do it.

This generally is a private event (for instance, your model’s anniversary or reaching 2000 followers) or a publicly-recognized one (Valentine’s Day, Christmas, Mom’s Day).

This contest hosted by a grocer celebrates Worldwide Girls’s Day by giving freely a product from a female-owned firm.

• Centre your giveaway round an upcoming vacation or particular date to present your contest a way of timeliness and event.
• If you happen to can, make the competition prize one thing that pertains to the event (for instance, give away a zero-waste product for Earth Day or a sweet cane-scented candle for Christmas).

• Incorporate a advertising and marketing plan into your Instagram contest technique.
• Create visuals that talk every part that customers must know in regards to the contest, with out bogging them down with info.
• Think about using carousel posts with one super-sharable cowl picture, then particulars in regards to the prize in later photographs.

On the subject of social media marketing, movies are the secret in 2023. Attempt making a Reel to attract viewers in and promote your contest.

For the giveaway beneath, the creator made a Reel that first engages customers with sturdy visuals and sounds (an ASMR-ish cooking video) and features a contest within the description. He retains the format easy, similar to his non-contest Reels. It’s not merely a Reel that markets the competition; it gives worth to his viewers as properly.

• Use Instagram reels to market your contests and giveaways.
• Make your giveaway reels match the remainder of your content material, so it doesn’t really feel misplaced.
• Incorporate worth past the competition announcement within the reel to make the video extra participating.

• If you happen to’re a enterprise working an Instagram contest, do your analysis into creators that could possibly make it easier to advertise.
• When you’ve discovered the proper creator, work with them to develop the competition content material (and pay them for his or her work).
• Be certain that to mark all posts as a paid partnership, or threat Instagram eradicating the posts or flagging your account.

• When internet hosting a photograph contest, be sure you have the assets and time to guage it.
• Think about using the photograph entries as user-generated content material (with the photographer’s permission, in fact).
• Embrace within the guidelines that you’ve the fitting to repost any entries.

Hashtags make for an effective way to host giveaways. Like a user-generated content material contest, hashtag giveaways require entrants to publish to their web page or tales beneath a particular hashtag (you establish what that’s your self).

Ideally, what you’ll find yourself with is a hashtag with sizeable site visitors. This format doesn’t simply let you simply preserve monitor of entries. It additionally drives engagement with a particular hashtag, which the algorithm tends to be aware of. A well-performing hashtag will drive site visitors again to your Instagram publish and your web page.

Be certain that to choose a hashtag that’s distinctive sufficient that nobody else is utilizing it… for instance, #goatsarefamily.

• Select a hashtag that your viewers can use to enter your contest.
• Be certain that the hashtag is artistic and that you just’re the one one utilizing it.
• Observe how widespread the hashtag is, and what number of entries you’re getting, to find out the success of the competition.

What number of manufacturers’ Instagram contests have you ever entered solely to by no means hear from them once more? Most of us completely overlook in regards to the contest post-entry. One option to preserve the competition contemporary in your viewers’s minds (even when they don’t win) is to share the identify of the winner.

In fact, ask the winner’s permission earlier than you do that, and don’t give out any of their private info. However sharing the winner helps show your authenticity to customers (and would possibly encourage them to enter your subsequent contest).

• When you’ve picked a winner of your giveaway, ask the particular person if their first identify or Instagram deal with will be shared on-line.
• Share the winner’s identify to substantiate to your viewers that you just’re legit, and to encourage them to enter once more.

Use Hootsuite to run your Instagram giveaway. From a single dashboard, you may schedule your posts, reply feedback and DMs, and monitor engagement in real-time. Attempt it free immediately.

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