There’s a lot to learn about Instagram giveaways, and there are a ton of dangers that you need to look out for… Unfortunately, I had to learn the hard way. I hope that in making this blog, I can help you avoid those costly mistakes that I made when I first began launching Instagram Giveaways.
TYPES OF INSTAGRAM GIVEAWAYS:
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THIRD-PARTY GIVEAWAY
A very common type of Instagram giveaway is through a third-party source. They will act as a middle man, connecting your brand (and likely many others) with an influencer, but this can be extremely dangerous. You must make sure that the influencer that they’re working with has the target demographic. You also have to be able to validate that their followers are legitimate. If you pay hundreds of dollars to enter a giveaway, you don’t want to later find out that the influencer has bought hundreds of thousands of followers as this won’t do any good for your brand.
2. ORGANIC POSTING
One of the easiest giveaways to do on Instagram is just through organic posting. As in: you/your brand comes up with a product or a basket of gifts that you want to give away, and you’ll just post it on your own at your leisure. Typically, I like to put some ad spend behind this type of giveaway to boost the post in order to reach your target demographic.
3. BRAND COLLABORATIONS
Brand collaboration giveaways are when two, three, or even more brands come together (these brands have similar target demographics with good size followings). The giveaway will then go up on their own social platforms, and there is a great synergy between each brand’s followers and target demographics coming together. The brands can promote one another’s pages, products, or services, and have their followers go and follow each other’s profiles. I’ve seen this work really, really well, and it’s definitely my favorite type of giveaway to run!
4. INFLUENCER CAMPAIGNS
The third (and final) kind of Instagram giveaway is collaborations with influencers. If you can partner with one or multiple influencers (been sure you’ve been able to validate them for yourself!) and offer a giveaway to their followers for coming back to your page (as in, they follow you or follow some specific order, etc.) then I’ve seen this work super well. Some of my favorite giveaways have been when I’ve gotten multiple influencers at the same time to post about the same giveaway!
In order to decide what kind of Instagram giveaway you want to run, you need to be really strategic about what your goals are. Are you looking to reach more people? Are you working to grow your brand’s following? Are you trying to drive sales? This should be well thought out prior to launching your first Instagram giveaway. Once you’ve decided on your strategy, and you know what your goal is with your giveaway, you’re going to want to decide on the rules to enter.
So here’s what I typically like to do with my brands:
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They must follow our brand.
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They need to comment and tag three friends on our giveaway post.
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Then additionally, I love taking them off the platform. (This gives you a lot of leverage if you can reach your new followers in more ways than just Instagram. If you get their email address, then you can also nurture them through email marketing campaigns, for example.) This is a win-win.
You’re going to want to decide on the timeframe for your Instagram giveaway. Typically you’re going to want to be between seven to 10 days. This is perfect, so it’s long enough that people have a chance to enter, but not too long so they forget about the contest altogether.
PREPARATION:
Now you need to plan the launch of your Instagram giveaway. You’re going to want to make sure that you have assets to post on Instagram, Instagram stories, as well as Facebook. Make sure to decide whether you’re going to use videos in your story or posts. Make sure you have enough content to remind people throughout the contest that new people can still enter. You will want to post daily about your giveaway to make sure that you stay in the forefront of people’s minds.
It is important to note: you need to be very clear about the rules of your Instagram giveaway. Can people enter more than once, or are they only allowed to comment and enter one time? Things like that! Since rules can get a little bit tricky and they’re more long-form than a typical caption, I love to use an app called “app for life host” that will create caption breaks between sentences, so it’s really, really crystal clear what the rules are to enter.
HOW TO SELECT THE WINNER
If you’ve made it this far, awesome! Now comes the fun part: It’s time to select your winner! So, you’re looking at hundreds of comments and entries and thinking, “how the heck am I going to choose a winner?” Well, there’s a web tool called miniwebtool.com (I will drop the link to this below) that will generate/choose a random name for you so you don’t have to spend hours sorting through different contest entries. Once your name generator has chosen the winner, be sure to announce the person on your Instagram story! (By the way, it’s a good thing to double-check that the profile name that was chosen is a REAL account before you post about it!)
Go ahead and update your giveaway post to reflect the winner’s name. Now, your contest is over, but the truly hard work starts. You need to ensure that you are super consistent after the contest ends and that you’re posting engaging content on a daily basis. New followers that followed you just for the contest, don’t necessarily unfollow you right afterward. If you can create super engaging content that creates brand loyalty, you’ll have all these new followers for life. Awesome, right?!
Now that you’re ready to launch your first Instagram giveaway, let me be the first to say, Congratulations!!! Also, if you want to learn how to turn your new followers (you know, the ones you gained from completing these Instagram giveaway tips) into customers, download my free ebook below.
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