If you are one of those users who use Instagram to market your internet business, you know that attracting targeted users is an important factor in the success of your business. If you can increase your followers in a targeted way, you can easily experience great sales as well. One of the great ways to increase your target audience is to create a contest on Instagram.
Instagram contests are the most exciting items that users can experience. If you, as a business, want to increase your followers, you can hold a successful Instagram contest. But what do we need to do to have a successful Instagram contest? In this article, we are going to review the tips and steps of holding an Instagram contest, which you can use to experience a successful Instagram contest. If you are ready, stay with us!

Different types of Instagram contests

different types of giveaways for Instagram contest
There are various competitions on Instagram, each of which has good results for certain types of businesses; Of course, any Instagram contest can be useful, but some of them are more productive and you can experience more sales at a lower cost. You should also keep in mind that the goal of a successful Instagram contest is not necessarily to increase sales and you can have other goals! For example, you can increase the number of followers or interaction of your account, or even your goal is to get a certain number of likes for a particular post. Here are three types of Instagram contests:

Type 1) Like posts to win the contest!

This type of contest is very common on Instagram; You must have seen the accounts that ask you to like a post to participate in the contest. Perhaps the simplest type of successful Instagram contest can be considered this type of contest; Because users do not need to work hard and just by liking a photo, he/she have a chance to participate in.
Create a Contest on Instagram with one click

The advantages of this method are:

Your account engagement is greatly increasing; In this way, users will simply follow you to participate in the contest and like one of your posts, which has a great impact on your engagement.
Users can easily enter the contest; In other methods, users may need to be present at the venue, but this is the simplest type of successful Instagram contest.

Disadvantages of this method are:

Your business conversion rate is very low; In this way, users participate in the contest very simply and have no interaction with the account other than following and liking you. They may not even read your posts and unfollow you after a while! Therefore, the conversion rate of users to customers is very low and can not be counted on to increase sales in this way.
Participants do not contribute to your branding very much; Your followers may seem to increase, but they are not usually targeted audiences! So they can’t really help with branding.
This method is only suitable when you want to increase the number of likes of a post or increase your engagement for a while. So if you are looking to brand or increase the sales of your business, I do not recommend using this method and you should use the other two methods that we will discuss below.

Type 2) Share posts with a special hashtag after you create a contest on Instagram!

Another attractive and professional way to conduct a successful Instagram contest is to use a special hashtag. In this method, you must select a dedicated Instagram hashtag for your contest and ask users to share their photos or videos with that hashtag. You should note that this hashtag is appropriate for the type of competition and your brand is also specified in it! This method has many advantages, but the most important is branding. Because when a large number of users share the hashtag you want, a large number of those users will see it and enter your Instagram account.
If you search for this hashtag on Instagram, you will see all the posts related to this contest that were shared by users. You too can have a successful Instagram contest by launching your own hashtag and greatly increase your account engagement. You can also ask users to tag your account in addition to using their own hashtag so that other users who see posts related to your contest will follow your Instagram account.
a keyboard to create a contest on Instagram

The advantages of this method are:

  • Increasing user engagement by publishing images or videos where your hashtag is placed.
  • Help the branding process to stick in the minds of many users.
  • The possibility of visiting many friends and followers who will follow you.
  • Ability to find all pictures and videos related to the contest on its hashtag page
  • Accessing contest posts by logging in to your contest hashtag page
  • Marketing products or services during the competition using creative methods.

Disadvantages of this method are:

Requesting the publication of images or videos on the users’ accounts may prevent them from participating in the contest!
If you directly ask them to publish a post on their account, tag you, and use a dedicated hashtag, they may not participate in the contest.
Note! Many users may not participate in this contest; Because publishing a promotional post about an account is not very interesting! Make it possible for such users to participate as well. For example, in addition to the main prize, you can choose another prize for those who comment or like, so that they can participate in the contest if they interact with you.
Instagram giveaways are usually done from the comments, likes, or followers of the account. Here we introduce different sites and software so you can choose from them.

How to create a contest on Instagram?

Establishing an Instagram contest is not a difficult task, but if you want to achieve your goals in your Instagram contest, you need to plan for your contest and run it smartly. On the other hand, you should follow and analyze it regularly so that you can change the structure of your contest if necessary. Here are four tips for having a successful Instagram contest so you can greatly increase your account engagement.

You need to plan to create a contest on Instagram

Have a strategy for your contest before you start; You need to write down exactly the start and end time of the contest with your goals on a piece of paper so that you can measure the success of the contest. Put even the smallest of your goals on a piece of paper so that at the end of the contest you can accurately talk about the success of your campaign. Many people are just looking for a contest but have no goal! Such people and accounts can not track their success because they do not have the criteria and factors to measure the success of their Instagram contest.
So before you start your campaign, set your goals. Your goals can be small or big; For example, your goal could be to attract 1,000 followers or even to mention 200 users by other users below the contest post. So it’s not very important what your goal is, it is important to reach your goal. Of course, depending on the type of business, your goal can be different, and achieving various goals in a successful Instagram contest will require different investments.
Note! Before you start a successful Instagram contest, I suggest you watch a contest. To do this, you can search the hashtag #competition in the search section to see different types of contests. This will give you an overview of Instagram contests that will help you a lot. In general, to start a contest after setting goals, you must go through the following steps:

Identify your target audience to create a contest on Instagram

Another thing that matters in an Instagram contest is the target audience. You need to know who interacts with your contest the most so, expose ads for your successful Instagram contest to such users.

Specify the type of competition!

At the beginning of this article, we reviewed the types of Instagram contests and explained the benefits of each method. Now it’s time to specify the type of your Instagram contest. For example, you might like your contest to be based on users’ likes or emails! there is no difference, But it is essential to run only one type of competition to get the most out of it. We suggest using the second type of contest (sharing posts with a special hashtag!).
Specify your contest format! Do you expect users to post photos or videos to participate in the contest? You can choose one of these formats or even leave the choice of format to the users! You may need to post videos and photos posted by users on your account later. It makes you able to provide a custom photo for users to publish!
Choose your own contest hashtag! To have a successful Instagram contest, you need to create a dedicated hashtag for users. This dedicated hashtag should be a symbol of your brand. So, users will remember your brand when they see it! You can take a look at Instagram contests for ideas.

Assign a suitable and valuable prize for the participants!

We all know that the key to encouraging users to participate in a contest is the prize. If your prize is appropriate and valuable, many users will participate in the contest, but if your prize is not encouraging enough, only a limited number of users who are really interested in you will participate. If the contest is going to create business value for you, I suggest that you make sure you provide a valuable prize and remind users of it during the contest. Your prize can also be one of the valuable products or services of your business; If you have a multi-million dollar digital product, giving it to a user may not cost you anything, but the truth is that users have received the service from you without having to pay millions. You can also consider low-cost products for future people or offer a discount code to buy the same valuable product. A little creativity in choosing an award can give you very good and valuable results.
  • Advertise the contest on the channels related to your business!
  • Do not miss Facebook and other social networks!
  • Send an email to your users!
  • Ask your audience to advertise your contest on their Instagram account or even their blog!
  • Use Instagram ads or ads on great Instagram accounts

Advertise after you create a contest on Instagram!

Perhaps the most significant step of a successful Instagram contest is to promote it. Now that you have initiated your contest, you must notify other users in addition to your followers. If you have a site for your business, you can create a post about the contest and explain to users the conditions for participating in the contest. Here are some ways to promote a successful Instagram contest:

Advertise the contest on the channels related to your business!

The first place you should advertise and inform your Instagram contest is your own channels and accounts on various social networks. For example, if you work on Facebook or Twitter, you can easily introduce your contest to many users and invite them to participate in the contest. Your business site is the most significant channel for informing the competition! Because the site is the only channel that users can always access its content. All you have to do is create a complete article and talk about the conditions and prize of your Instagram contest. Then ask users to follow your Instagram account and participate in the contest if they are interested. You can also put a direct link to the contest-related post that you have published on your Instagram account on the site so that users can enter the contest post with just one click.

Send emails to your users!

Our goal in holding a successful Instagram contest is to direct all the business users we have attracted from various channels to Instagram! So you must have collected the emails of some users in different ways; I suggest you send an email with the subject of the invitation to the Instagram contest and ask them to participate in the contest. Also, be sure to mention the contest prize so that more users are encouraged to participate in the contest.

Use Instagram ads or ads on big Instagram accounts!

The Instagram social network has made it possible to display ads to thousands of users and of course in a targeted way! You can easily show your ad to users and encourage them to participate in your Instagram contest. Also, if you want to use other advertising methods, you can pay for your ads to be displayed on large pages and attract their users. Of course, you can only use public pages if your contest is public! But if your competition is in a specific area, I suggest you only advertise on pages that operate in the same area to get the most out of the cost you pay.

Last words on creating a contest on Instagram

Using the methods presented in this section, you can easily increase the community of participants in your contest and experience a successful Instagram contest.
Author

Social media, business, and Tech. writer. I use my skills, relationships and passion to create the content that helps.

1 Comment

  1. As an Instagram user, I like to participate in contests held on that platform. How can I find the best ones with the best prizes? Are they even trustworthy? Do they really give away the prizes?

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