How To Do a Giveaway on Instagram? (5 Steps)

Today, if you want to become popular or famous on social media, the first place you need to go is Instagram. Instagram has 2 billion active users, and this makes Instagram one of the biggest social media platforms in the whole world. Thus, one path that leads to success goes from Instagram. To achieve that, you need to beat the Instagram algorithm. The Instagram algorithm is the decision-center that decides upon which post goes where. To be able to be popular on Instagram, the algorithm needs to see you.

How? You might say. Well, that goes through engagement. Engagement means the activity on your accounts, starting from your followers to like numbers. To increase engagement, you need to communicate with your followers and get them to like your posts and comment on them. One way of achieving this is to do a giveaway on Instagram.

As we all know, Instagram giveaways are processes when you give away free samples, gifts, or coupons to your followers. Many influencers put conditions like following, liking, and tagging under the post, which increases engagement influentially. If you are in need of increased engagement, then, you are in the right place. Today, we will discuss how to do a giveaway on Instagram, by following 5 simple steps. So, let’s start!

Why You Should Host an Instagram Giveaway?

As we said above, Instagram giveaways are great ways to improve your engagement rate on your account. Since Instagram is one of the biggest social media platforms, conducting a giveaway can have lots of benefits for your account. If you are wondering why you should run a giveaway on Instagram, here are some benefits of doing it:

• Increase Engagement: Instagram giveaways help you to enhance your engagement. The Instagram contest encourages your followers to like and comment on your posts so that they can participate in the giveaway. These actions can help you have an increased engagement on Instagram.
• Grow your Audience: When you host a huge Instagram giveaway, you can interact with new followers and help you to grow your audience. When your followers tag their friends to participate, it increases the opportunity to become your followers.
• Promote products or services: If you are a brand that tries to earn new customers, giveaways can be your way to promote your services and products. Moreover, you can use Instagram giveaways to collect contact information for future promotions.
• Brand Awareness: Instagram giveaways can increase your brand’s visibility on the platform and inform more people about your products and brand. Also, if your followers enjoy the giveaway process, they can wait for the next one and engage with it more.

Types of Instagram Giveaways

If we encourage you to host an Instagram giveaway right now, there are some alternatives you can choose from. Based on our list, you can find the best contest type suited for your brand and audience. Today, we collected 9 Instagram giveaway alternatives for you. So, let’s go!

Like and Follow Giveaways

This type of Instagram giveaway is one of the most well-known and, probably, the easiest one for both followers and account owners. All you need to do is to share a post or picture that announcing the giveaway. Then, you can write the conditions of the giveaway, which are liking the post and following your account. Anyone who fulfills these actions can participate in the Instagram giveaway and can win the contest. This way, you increase the engagement of your account and earn new followers!

Tag a Friend Giveaways

After liking and following, another popular Instagram giveaway is “Tag a Friend Giveaways”. In those giveaways, again you announce your giveaway with a post. However, this time, you can add the condition of tagging a number of accounts under the comments section. Some influencers limit that to 3 accounts while others say that you can tag any number of accounts you want to increase their chance! That type of Instagram giveaway can be very beneficial for your account. Tagging other accounts can increase your visibility and engagement on the account since tagged accounts can also be your followers in the meantime.

Comment to Win Giveaways

This strategic Instagram contest is one of the most preferred types of Instagram giveaways for brands and professional accounts. In that type of giveaway, brands or account owners ask a question under the post and ask their followers to answer that to participate in the contest. Followers can write down an answer, or sentence or leave an emoji to participate in the contest. This method, actually, boosts the interaction of the post among users and creates a conversation around the brand or your product.

Photo or Video Contests

If you need visual promotion and content about your brand on Instagram, then, this type of giveaway is what you seek! To enter the Instagram giveaway, participants have to take a photo or a video in the way you described and tag the special hashtag created for the giveaway. This way, you can compile the content created for you for a specific hashtag, increase your visibility, and boost user-generated content as well. As we know, user engagement is crucial for the Instagram algorithm. If the algorithm sees that your followers are creating content using your hashtag and tagging your account, it will recommend your posts to a similar audience. This way, you can enhance your visibility and reachability on the platform.

Story Giveaways

Ever since the stories have entered our lives, their impact has become bigger and bigger every day. Thus, integrating them into the giveaways was inevitable. This Instagram giveaway includes sharing the giveaway post or a post on your account on stories. When your followers share the post on their stories, they will participate in the giveaway and have a chance to win it. That way of contesting is influential because sharing can increase your visibility among your followers’ audience. A friend can see the post and participate in the giveaway you conduct. Thus, you can grow your audience and increase the visibility.

Hashtag Campaigns

Do you want to grow your audience and increase the posts under your brand? Then, this giveaway is for you! In that type of Instagram giveaway, you should create a hashtag defining your brand or your slogan. You can ask your followers to share a post using your hashtag. This way, you can broaden your campaign’s reach and increase your brand’s visibility on Instagram. Increasing the number of user-generated content for your brand can be a way of attracting the attention of the Instagram algorithm.

Trivia or Quiz Giveaways

One of the most engaging and fun ways to run a giveaway on Instagram is trivia or quiz giveaways. In that type of Instagram giveaway, the account owner creates trivia questions or a quiz, asking about the brand or brand’s interesting facts. You can set the rules for this giveaway to win the contest, such as answering all the questions or 2/3 of the questions correctly to win the quiz. That type of giveaway engages followers in a fun way and enables you to have a different giveaway from the others. This way, your audience can learn about your brand and engage with your services more!

Caption Contests

Another creative way of Instagram contests is having a caption contest. There, participants are asked to write creative captions for a post you shared and asked for your giveaway. In this process, participants give a comment, writing a creative caption for the post you shared, and among those, you choose the best one you like. If you want to have fair results, you can choose the one who got the most likes, also. This Instagram giveaway promotes engagement for your account and encourages the creativity of your users.

Collaborative Giveaways

These giveaways are the ones a couple of account owners work together. Collaborative Giveaways can be helpful for you if you have a relatively small account and are trying to earn new followers. In that type of Instagram giveaway, participants may need to follow a couple of accounts to take place in the giveaway. This way, you can both give a gift to your audience in a more budget-friendly way, and you can grow your account’s and others’ audience as well.

Once you choose the type of Instagram giveaway, there’s only one thing to do; conduct a giveaway. Now, let’s learn about how to do a giveaway on Instagram successfully.

5 Steps on How to Do a Giveaway on Instagram

As we said above, Instagram giveaways are one of the best ways to increase engagement and boost your visibility on the platform. However, conducting the Instagram giveaway is not the only step to achieving this success. There are 5 steps you should carefully follow so that your giveaway can be a great success. So, if you are wondering about to become successful on your giveaways, here are the five steps you should follow to run a giveaway on Instagram.

Determine Your Goals

To do a giveaway on Instagram, you should be clear about your goals and achievements. In this process, you should be concise about your aims because it helps you to tailor your strategies when it comes to those giveaways. This way, you can choose the most suitable type of Instagram giveaway you want to employ for your followers and start to earn your aims. If you are not sure about your goals, here are some examples:

• Increase your followers
• Get more newsletter subscribers
• Increase traffic to a particular website
• Increase the number of user-generated content prepared for your brand
• Promote a specific or new product
• Increase your likes on Instagram to boost engagement

Decide on an Instagram Giveaway Prize

After you have decided your aim to do an Instagram Giveaway, the next thing you should do is decide on an Instagram giveaway prize. The first and second steps are actually related to one another. What you choose as a prize largely depends on your aims. For example, if you want to promote your product and raise awareness about it, then, you should give one of them as a prize in a giveaway. Moreover, you can create a season-themed product or version so that you can give away it in the season, let’s say Christmas.

No matter what your prize is, you should be careful about choosing so that your prize can match your goals. Of course, everyone loves free stuff and so on. However, if your prize is not related to your aims, then the whole giveaway will be wasted or simply focused on your followers.

Set the Entry Criteria

Entry criteria basically means the things the participants should do in order to take place in the Instagram giveaway. The entry actions can vary depending on the purpose of the Instagram giveaway, again step one.

Here is a table of things you should ask for based on your aim:

Promote Your Giveaway

After you finish planning your giveaway, there is one thing that needs to be done, launching it! What makes a giveaway successful is not only its type, aim, or content but also how you describe it! A strong and influential description with a killer call-to-action (CTA) can make your giveaway more popular and engaging for others.

The most convenient and popular way of conducting an Instagram Giveaway is the grid post. However, depending on your audience, you can always try new formats as well. If your audience engages with you mostly through reels or stories, you can use Instagram reels and stories to share your Instagram contest.

Select and Announce the Winner

The process of giveaway is important, yes, but post-giveaway is also crucial for a successful Instagram contest. By post-giveaway, we mean ending the Instagram giveaway and choosing the winner. First things first, you should be careful about the deadline. Once you mentioned that the giveaway will be finished on a specific date, you should follow it because your followers will be!

Later, when it comes to announcing, you can do it differently. However, it is important to be open and clear about the results. Everyone loves reliable giveaways so that they can take place in the next ones. Thus, you should share the winning list with your followers. How? You can tag the winner under the winner’s comment and say you won. Moreover, you can conduct a live choosing session on your account and choose the winner. This way, you can be reliable among your audience and increase your engagement via live streaming. No matter what you choose, you should keep in mind being reliable so that you can attract more people to your new Instagram giveaways.

3 Instagram Giveaway Ideas

As we mentioned above, there are different types of giveaways on Instagram. From Tag a Friend Giveaways to Caption Contest, you can create lots of giveaways on your account so that you can attract new followers. In this chapter, we collected 3 most used examples of Instagram Giveaways. You can take a look at them and have an idea about how to conduct one! So, let’s start!

1. Like, Share, and Tag It! – Product Sample

One of the most common ways of doing an Instagram Giveaway is sending your product to your followers. Yes. If you want to raise an awareness about your products or services, you can give your followers a free one! This way, they can share it on their account to thank you!

To make it more visible on the platform, like this account below, you can create some engaging entry criteria. For example, this brand gives out a free bag and ask participants to like the post, share it and tag three other accounts. This way, new people can also find out about your giveaway, and they can participate in it!

2. Why only one can gain from this? – Collaborative Giveaways

Another popular type of Instagram giveaways is collaborative giveaways. Collaborative ones help more than one account to do a giveaway on Instagram and earn new followers. These accounts come together, select some products, and conduct a giveaway together. You can understand these types of giveaways from their entry criteria. For example, in this Instagram giveaway below, they ask participants to follow two accounts together to become a participant. In this way, both accounts can gain new followers, new engagement and brand awareness.

3. Only comments? We don’t think so! – Story Giveaways

Last but not least, one of the most common ways of creating an Instagram runaway is story giveaways. What are those? Story giveaways ask people to share the Instagram giveaway post on their stories. This helps a lot of people to see your giveaway and participate in it as well. This way, you can attract more people and reach out to a bigger audience who are not only your followers! For example, in this post, the brand says that people can share the post in their stories if they want to get an extra chance!

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