How to Set Up Your First Instagram Giveaway + Free Giveaway Ideas

There aren’t many ways to increase the Instagram following than hosting contests. Instagram giveaway create interaction with your current audience and attract many new followers and views. They’re a tried-and-true way to boost engagement in a manner that algorithms on Instagram will be unable to resist.

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What Are Instagram Giveaways?

Giveaways on Instagram are limited-time events that allow brands to donate a product or service to one (or several) lucky winners based on the specified criteria.

If you’ve ever spent a significant time with Instagram, you’ve likely witnessed a giveaway taking place on the spot. Small and household-name brands alike utilize Instagram giveaways to spread the word about new products, reach out to new followers, and increase their following on social media.

Whatever you’re offering (or trying to be the winner), Instagram giveaways can be a fantastic way to make a splash and gain new potential fans.

Why You Should Host an Instagram Giveaway

Instagram giveaways are an effective strategy to encourage participation from your followers and attract new audiences.

Giveaways hosted by accounts have the potential to draw hundreds or even thousands of followers and entries.

A study by Tailwind discovered that giveaways on Instagram could boost your following by 70% faster over three months than had not held an event at all.

However, businesses and brands can frequently see a drop in sales after the contest.

This is why it’s important to host thoughtful, well-planned giveaways which will attract your ideal audience & they will keep coming back.

How to run a giveaway on Instagram 

Doing a giveaway on Instagram is not easy, you should follow a proper procedure to launch a successful giveaway & achieve your target.

1. Determine a Goal

The first thing to accomplish to start the Instagram giveaway is to determine what you want to accomplish with the giveaway. If you do not set the goal, you’re giving away your prize at no cost, which is great for your followers but not beneficial for the business. Giveaways on Instagram can serve many purposes, and establishing a target is essential to maximize the benefit of the contest.

Types of Goals

• Boost engagement on your Instagram posts
• Grow your Instagram followers
• Boost Your Email subscribers
• Create UGC, or user-generated content (UGC)
• Increase the number of visitors to your website
• The ability to increase sales of a particular product
• General awareness of your company or brand new product
• Engaging in activity around a certain Instagram hashtag

It is possible to achieve one or multiple goals simultaneously. The other decisions for the giveaway, such as the prize, the content, or anything, are based on the purpose, so be sure to be certain of your goal.

2. Collaborate with other brands/influencers

Collaboration with an influencer or brand that has a large following, which increases your prize pool as well as your reach. People are more likely to participate in giveaways sponsored by a brand they can trust. It is important to ensure that the brand that is collaborating with you or the influencer falls within the same industry or has the same principles to boost the size of your Instagram presence and increase traffic.

If you’re working with a brand, contest participants must follow the respective brands to be eligible and take home. The influencer or brand working with you will announce your Instagram announcement of the contest to their Instagram profile to create an active and loyal audience. If you’re planning to run an incentive to boost your Instagram profile, this is the most effective way to reach a larger crowd.

3. Research your audience

Knowing and understanding your target audience can help you develop your Instagram giveaway. You can gather a range of information like your audience’s location, gender, and age with “Insights” in Instagram’s Instagram app. Additionally, you can look at your audience’s behavior and their interactions with your brand, and what particular content they prefer and engage with.

4. Be familiar with Instagram guidelines

The guidelines for Instagram’s promotion are fairly easy when compared to Facebook. It is imperative to strictly adhere to the Instagram guidelines to avoid being removed from the platform.

5. Pick a prize that your audience will love

Prizes are the sole factor that can entice participants to participate in your contest. Your prize must be appropriate to your business or the brand your customers require. In this way, you will get people interested in your brand or niche instead of in prizes.

The most important goal for every new business is to increase the number of Instagram followers. And we already know the initial 10k followers are the most difficult to attain. Smaller businesses that have no or very few followers can give away lavish prizes like iPhones, iPad, cash, vacation time, and Amazon gift cards to boost their growth in followers.

But, businesses that have an established number of Instagram followers shouldn’t give away these attractive prizes. They could attract thousands of followers, but they won’t generate new customers or attract quality participants. When the giveaway ends, participants who were who are interested in winning the prize will stop following you.

You must be thinking about the prizes you could give away. For example, $25-$30 could be enough for a giveaway where users are asked to tag their friends. However, if you require users to make content and then tag your company, you must provide an attractive prize. What amount to put into a prize is entirely up to you. Many options are offered to suit all budgets. The choices are like this:

• An exclusive prize pack containing your items
• The services you provide yourself (free membership and loyalty points)
• A gift card from your local store or credit card for a store
• You may also lookup the prizes that are given by your competition or similar niches that host contests for giveaway prize suggestions.

It is also necessary to establish the amount of the prize and the number of units to be used.

6. Determine how users will participate

We listed seven types of Instagram giveaways in the previous paragraph (Like and Follow Tag a Friend Comments to win, Video/Photo + Hashtag, Repost with Hashtag Trivia, Caption, or Skill-based). If this is your first time participating in trying to win, you should make your giveaway as simple as possible to maximize exposure and growth. The procedure for entry must take just 2 or 3 steps.

Many sponsors require that users like comments or share, repost, or even share a Story to increase engagement, but it becomes difficult for the users to join the prize over time. So users avoid entering. One of the best ways to increase participation is by encouraging users to leave comments, follow, or tag.

If you want to increase your number of followers, invite users to ‘follow your brand’s page to be entered and take home a prize.

If you’re looking to make your brand more visible by inviting participants to post their Instagram Giveaway photos or tag their friends in the comments

7. Duration of a giveaway

It is the next stage to decide the duration of an Instagram giveaway. The selection of the appropriate length, i.e., one day, several days, a week, or two weeks, is important when it comes to giving away an Instagram giveaway.

Brands with a large and highly active audience will opt for sweepstakes that run 24 hours, but smaller companies should stay clear of it because too short will not be enough to draw people in and encourage them to participate.

The sponsors make the mistake of thinking that a longer duration of the giveaway will draw more people. However, if the contest is too long, participants may forget about it.

Most sponsors limit their time to 3-7 days because it boosts the excitement and urgency among those who enter

8. Select the creative and right giveaway hashtags

Hashtags can help you monitor entries and conversations that occur during the Instagram Contest and highlight your company, campaign, or product. Making a unique and compelling hashtag is crucial to increasing engagement for the Instagram Giveaway. The hashtag should be relevant to the particular campaign and your company’s name to increase branding awareness.

You should create a lengthier as well as more descriptive hashtag with the words giveaway or contest.

9. Create a giveaway post  

Instagram’s main focus is photos, so create a high-quality and engaging giveaway post that will grab the interest of your fans. There is no set of guidelines to create the perfect giveaway on Instagram. Two essential aspects of each Instagram giveaway post are an attractive, vibrant image and a text that announces the giveaway.

Ideal Instagram Giveaway Image Format

You need to create an appealing photo or image for your giveaway to draw attention and attract attention. Two attractive photos are required to use for your Instagram giveaway that is suitable for posts and the other for Stories. Both have different sizes.

The image should include:

• Specific prize
• The deadline for the giveaway is November 30th.
• “Win ___” (name of the prize)
• Limit (age or place of residence) as a subheading
• “Giveaway” is the word that means “giveaway.”
• Your logo and brand colors
• Hashtag that is centered around giveaways (if there is one)

10. Start and promote your giveaway Contest

Once the planning and preparation have been completed, you can launch your giveaway; after you have completed your preparations, launch your giveaway on Instagram. After you have launched the Instagram Giveaway, the next step is to advertise the contest to ensure it becomes popular and a successful sweepstakes promotion. Promotion is an important element in bringing more attention to your contest.

Instagram giveaway ideas

Simple draw

It could be a mix of “Share + Like” or ‘Like + Comment’ as well as ‘Share and Tag Friends or ‘Share + Tag Friends. The goal is simply to increase an environment of engagement and to reach out to more people.

Promote a photo contest

If this is in line with your brand’s vision If this is the case, you could request your followers to share pictures of (or connected or related to) or related to your product on their own profiles. In this instance, as well as encouraging content creation by your brand, you can help your brand be visible to people who follow the participants.

Create the captions for the post

This is an innovative and enjoyable method of generating engagement. You could offer your product or service to the most imaginative answer and then attract new followers who are keen on winning (or making a fun comment).

Write a slogan for the brand

This suggestion clearly tells followers that their opinions are vital. Inviting their opinions in the comments section, For instance, will increase engagement and inform you about what people think of your company’s image.

Design the logo for the brand or packaging for an upcoming product

Similar to the previous suggestion asking for these kinds of interactions helps bring the brand’s image closer to the people who are interested in it and gives you an idea of how they perceive it.

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