How to Successfully Organize Freebies and Contests on Instagram: Creative Instagram Content Ideas

How to run an Instagram giveaway or contest successfully

Running an Instagram competition or contest is a strategic way to engage your followers and grow your following while generating creative Instagram content ideas. Moreover, it's a delightful method to give back to your followers and cultivate more of them into loyal customers. With a plethora of social media contest ideas available, you can select the one that aligns perfectly with your brand. These contests serve as an effective tactic for accumulating a library of user-generated content and attracting new followers. Throughout this comprehensive guide, we will delve deeper into what an Instagram contest entails and why you'd want to host one. Additionally, we will provide a step-by-step guide on how to successfully organize your giveaway, ensuring it's a rewarding experience for both you and your audience.

Why should you host an Instagram contest?

An Instagram competition or contest tends to start with an Instagram post that asks your followers to complete some kind of task to enter the competition comp to win a free product or prize. This type of crusade can induce a lot of excitement around your brand, bringing in new eyes and occasionally increasing reach and engagement.

There are several advantages to using this tactic. Let's cover the most important bones.

Get more followers.

Numerous brands believe that druggies entering their competition must first follow them on Instagram. Follow-gating your competition like this ensures that your Instagram following grows alongside your entries. While you'll likely launch entries from those who formerly followed you, prepare to see some growth as your giveaway gains traction.

Induce advanced engagement

Instagram campaigns can induce advanced engagement on specific posts( your giveaway advertisement, obviously), but they can also ameliorate your engagement overall. Algorithms work in funny ways, but once it realizes that you're getting a lot more engagement than usual, it'll launch to place your content in front of even more eyes, boosting your total engagement.

Increase reach and prints

Also, your Instagram profile can help you increase your overall reach and prints. The more engagement on your giveaway posts, the more likely your content will be shown to followers. However, you'll pop up at the top of their feeds more frequently, helping to increase your reach if druggies keep seeing your content and interacting with it.

Produce an occasion to unite with others.

Incipiently, Instagram comps present a great collaboration occasion. Numerous brands( as you'll see us cover shortly) choose to co-host comps. Find a brand with a product that’s reciprocal to yours( i.e., if you vend silk pillowcases, collaborate with a brand that sells hair masks) and give away those products together in a beautiful little pack.

Types of Instagram comps

There are five main types of Instagram campaigns that you'll see brands use. We'll walk you through each of these workshops and why you might want to choose that route.

Like, comment, and follow.

One of the most popular styles of entry is to have people like your print publicize your Instagram contest, leave a comment, and follow your account in order to gain entry.

Label a friend

Do you want to promote your Instagram contest more widely? When people enter, ask them to tag a friend! Druggies can tag as many musketeers as they like in order to indeed get more entries.

Also, those druggies are likely to enter and tag some of their own musketeers, creating a ripple effect of mindfulness around your contest and brand. You can also host a label-a-friend Instagram contest in order to ask your followers to nominate someone who deserves a prize.

Stoner-generated content 

Still, creating an Instagram campaign around that conception can be a great way to do it if you're looking to put together a crusade around gathering user-generated content( UGC) to partake online.

Ask your followers to share a print on their feed using a specific, ingrained hashtag or tag your business so that you can easily find all of the entries in one place.

Not only does this award your guests for helping you out, but it also gives you an entire magazine of stoner-generated prints to partake in on your feed for future content planning.

Because this type of giveaway entry requires a lot more trouble on your cult's part, you'll want to make the prize worth it.

Collaboration

As we mentioned before, another way to broaden your followership is by uniting with an analogous brand for your giveaway prizes. This way, the cult of all involved brands can learn about new, analogous brands and indeed have a better prize at the end.

Instagram Stories

While Instagram contests are each about giving back to your followership, there are important benefits for your overall Instagram marketing strategy too. Brands can garner a lot of attention and induce bigger followership through them as well.

Having your followers partake in a post on their Instagram Stories as a form of entry can be another great way to get the word out there.

It's super easy for druggies to partake in posts to their Instagram Stories, so asking for a commodity like this as an entry isn't asking too much of your followership and can be a great way to spread the word.

Once you decide on a stylish entry system for your contest, it’s time to start planning out the rest of the details.

First, decide how long you want to run your Instagram contest. How many days will your followers have to enter? Make sure that the deadline is destined and that you easily let your followers know when entering will end.

Alternately, are you going to use a hashtag for your crusade? Whether you have people post prints with that hashtag or ask them to use it in the commentary, creating a crusade-specific hashtag that no bone

Using it differently is a good idea. In this manner, you'll be able to distinguish contest entries from everyday brand posts.

Third, what's the theme for your contest? 

This is especially important for UGC-concentrated contests. You want to make sure your followers know what types of prints you're looking for them to partake in.

And when the time comes, how will you let the winner know? Are you going to comment on them? Take part in a fresh post? Talking to them? In an Instagram story, give them a name?

Before you start the contest, you must prepare for each of these impacts.

Creating your campaign entails

The next step in your strategy is to organize a campaign to promote and advertise your Instagram competition, an essential aspect of generating fresh Instagram content ideas. This approach allows you to cross-promote your contest across various vibrant platforms, such as your email newsletters and website, ensuring maximum exposure. Utilize your Instagram Stories and feed to create visually appealing content that previews the upcoming contest, ensuring that it garners attention and anticipation among your followers. Your visual assets should stand out, and consider labeling them with "comp" or a similar clear phrase, making it easily recognizable. Captioning is equally vital in your quest for Instagram content ideas. Begin with an attention-grabbing hook to engage your audience, followed by a clear explanation of the contest rules, the enticing prize, and the entry process. Always ensure compliance with Instagram's guidelines and notify them about any business collaborations.

Analyze your giveaway entry performance.

If you have any issues regarding your promotion, pay special attention to the number of entries received with the giveaway hashtag and the number of eligible entries.

To create reports on the usage of hashtags and keywords, the number of followers, the engagement rate, and other metrics, utilize a social media management platform like Sprout Social.