You may have been plugging away at your Instagram growth for a while now, but you feel like there’s something missing. Have you ever thought of doing an Instagram giveaway?
Perhaps you may want to find a way to give back and celebrate your first 1000 followers, or maybe you’re just trying to come up with a new strategy to get more traffic to your page and website. Whatever the reason, there’s never been a better time than now to host a successful Instagram giveaway. How do you make sure that it hits the spot, though, and doesn’t fail completely? Well, that’s what we’re here for.
Just like with anything that you try for the first time, there are going to be a few things you’ll need to give it the best chance of success. You may have even tried holding an Instagram giveaway before, but didn’t get the results from it that you were expecting.
Steps for Hosting a Successful Instagram Giveaway
To make sure that you get it right this time, we’ve created a super easy to follow, step by step guide. Let’s dive in and check it out.
1. What is the Overall Goal?
Not only is hosting an Instagram giveaway helpful for your followers, but of course, it can benefit you too if you plan it out the right way. In fact, it can help you with many different things, from increasing your Instagram likes and comments to help get those blog readers up.
At the end of the day, what it can help you with all comes down to what your goals are. What are you hoping to get from it? Does the blog need a bit of help, or would you rather see your follower count increase?
The more focused you are on one specific goal, the more likely you are to achieve it. If you’re struggling to pick just one goal, we suggest checking out these helpful Instagram courses, which can help you work out exactly what you’re trying to get out of growing your Instagram.
2. Pick the Right Prize
You can’t host a giveaway without a prize – everyone knows that. However, it’s vital that you pick the right one that’s going to grab a lot of attention.
You need to make sure that your prize is something that your target audience really wants. Of course, the more relevant it is to your target audience as a whole, the more likely they are going to engage with your content in order to have a chance of winning it.
While some people go crazy and spend a lot on their giveaway prize, we don’t think that this is necessary – as long as it appeals to your target audience, you’ll be fine.
3. Keep it Simple
The next thing you need to think about when it comes to your giveaway is the rules that you’re going to set. With this in mind, you need to remember that less is more.
The more rules you make around it, the more complicated it’s going to get, which could end up putting people off entering in the first place. We suggest asking your followers to like the giveaway post and tag a friend in the comments. This isn’t too much work for them, and it means that you can get a lot of exposure for your brand with just one post and two simple instructions.
Another thing to consider is that most Instagram users don’t really like sharing other people’s posts, so don’t ask them to repost your content.
Once you’re decided on the rules, type them out in the caption of your giveaway post. Make sure that they’re clear, and make sure that you include a disclaimer. Instagram requires you to do this so that your followers know that you are not being sponsored by Instagram for the giveaway.
4. Keep it Short
Nobody wants to enter a giveaway that’s going to take forever to end. Your followers want to know ASAP if they’ve won the prize or not. If you put a time limit on the giveaway that’s relatively short, there will be a sense of urgency among your followers that will make them more likely to enter it.
We recommend sticking to just 3-7 days, or if you have a lot of Instagram followers already, you can even host a 24/7 giveaway every now and then as well.
5. Promote Yourself
While it’s all very well to post your giveaway content up so that all of your followers can see it, this is not enough if you want to reach an even wider audience.
Perhaps you may want to consider mentioning the giveaway before it happens and include hashtags that are relevant to the prize or the context of the giveaway.
If you’re having trouble thinking of the right hashtags, you can always use Hashtags for Likes to put you on the right track to find trending hashtags. We also recommend making the most of your stories. People like to be updated on things through stories, so this is a great way to hint at what is coming up, to get people pumped for it before it’s even begun.
If you’ve got an email list through your blog, we also think it’s worth sending an email out beforehand, too, and of course, don’t forget to share your giveaway on your other social media platforms once it’s out.
6. Be Fair When Choosing a Winner
Once your giveaway has ended, you’ll have the tough job of choosing a winner. You need to collect all the entrants together, and put them into a random generator so that it’s completely unbiased.
Once the winner has been selected, you’ll need to verify with your audience that you followed all the rules. Once you’ve done this, you can announce who won. This is important because if you don’t, then people will think that nobody won, and it won’t look good.
Speaking of Hashtags for Likes, it’s vital that you are wise about the hashtags that you use when promoting your giveaway.
You don’t want to throw your hashtag strategy out the window just because you’re doing a giveaway. We don’t even recommend using hashtags like #contest or #giveaway, because they are only going to attract people who are on Instagram for the freebies. Therefore they won’t be within your target audience and won’t be interested in checking out your account.
Be sure to stay away from banned hashtags to avoid being shadowbanned.
8. Avoid Loop Giveaways
Loop giveaways can bring you a lot of followers in a very short time period – but most of them are just going to drop off again.
A loop giveaway is when accounts team up with one another to buy an expensive prize, then they lead their Instagram followers through a loop, by getting them to follow each user continually. This method takes up a lot of time for your Instagram users, and most of the time, they don’t even know how many accounts they’re supposed to follow, which can make their task feel like it’s never going to end.
By the time the giveaway actually happens, your users will have lost interest, and any new followers you have gained will have just dropped off again. Don’t fall for this trap and team up with anyone else when you’re doing a giveaway – make it a solo mission.
Final Thoughts
There you have it – eight easy steps for hosting a successful Instagram giveaway.
This is a great way to boost your follower count, give back to your community, or just show your appreciation and interact with your followers in a different way. Good luck!
