An Instagram giveaway is great for many reasons.
- Free stuff!
- Discover new accounts.
However, hosting an Instagram giveaway is even better. In this article, we’ll discuss why you should host an Instagram giveaway and how to host the best one possible.
What Is An Instagram Giveaway?
An Instagram giveaway is when you use your Instagram account to give away free stuff.
That can range from gift cards, handmade products, clothes, or a whole selection of stuff.
Sometimes a user will buy the items themselves and post them, or they will partner with a brand who will send the items on their behalf.
In this post, @love__your__space is giving away two A2 prints of the winner’s choice.
In this picture, @inkandwonder.designs is giving away $100 store credit to their online shop! This allows the winner more freedom with their prize.
If you follow all the rules in the caption, you will be randomly selected to win the prize.
Of course, it’s a wonderful and easy way to win free stuff! If you enter enough, one of these days, you will hopefully win!
Why Host An Instagram Giveaway
There are many reasons to host an Instagram giveaway.
- You will get new followers. Whether you are a brand or an influencer, new followers will result in more sales for your brand or a wider audience for your influencing.
- An Instagram giveaway will result in more interaction. In the photos shared above, both giveaways have over 2,000 comments. When you have more interaction on your photos, the Instagram algorithm pushes your account out to more people!
- You can work with other brands. Whether you’re a shop or not, you can team up with other brands to create the most epic giveaway. Working with popular stores is a good idea for you and your followers. Your audience will respect you for giving them something so awesome, and if it’s a bigger brand, they will also help get you seen by more people.
- In fact, you can learn about your audience. If you are a home styling Instagram account, it’s important to give away relevant things. For example, you can do an Instagram giveaway for candles, linen or art. After having done a few Instagram accounts, you will see which ones did the best, and that will help you center your content on your follower’s preference more. Also, you want to make sure you’re targeting the right audience so that any new followers will be ones that stick around.
- It’s a brilliant way to say thank you to your followers. Of course, the best way to grow on Instagram is to work on your personal relationship with your audience. Hosting an Instagram giveaway every time you reach a milestone, 20k, 50k, 100k, will show your followers how much you appreciate their support.
In conclusion, there is no reason why you shouldn’t host an Instagram giveaway!
How To Host An Instagram Giveaway
There are many ways you could go about hosting an Instagram giveaway. However, we have found that the more simple, and more subtle, the better.
Asking your followers to do lots of crazy and time-consuming tasks will result in fewer entries.
Therefore, keep it simple and easy for people to enter.
Use The Photo To Grab Attention
First, you need to take an eye-catching photo! The best thing to do is photograph the products that the winners will be receiving. Simply having the words ‘Giveaway’ on a colorful background will not catch everyone’s attention. But if you have a lovely professional photo of the books you’re giving away, in the trademark style of your feed, people will stop scrolling to read what your giveaway is about!
For example, @whimsifybox used a photo of their box as well as big bold letters stating the Instagram giveaway. This caught their followers attention; plus, any new followers that came along could easily notice the giveaway in the feed!
Therefore, it’s important to write ‘Giveaway’ on the photo somewhere so that new followers see there’s a giveaway going on.
@thebibliotheque hosted an Instagram giveaway in October and didn’t advertise that it was a giveaway in the actual photograph, so unless her followers read the caption, they wouldn’t have noticed there was an Instagram giveaway happening here!
In fact, only 73 people entered this giveaway as opposed to the 1114 people that entered the @whimsifybox giveaway.
There are so many fabulous apps to add nice text to your photo! Some favorites are Canva, Studio Design and Over.
Write The Perfect Caption
Your caption needs to be clear, concise and fun to read. Make sure you come across friendly and excited in it!
Open your caption with the news of a giveaway. For example, you can write ‘Giveaway’ in all caps with some emojis! That will certainly grab people’s attention.
Tip: When the Instagram giveaway is finished, don’t forget to update the caption and state that it’s closed.
Start with a line stating you’re hosting an Instagram giveaway.
Next, explain why. Are you celebrating something, or just feeling kind?
If you are partnering with a brand, state early on in the caption that you’ve teamed up with said company. This gives the brand a better chance of standing out, and gets your followers excited about the partnership!
Following that, list the item or items that you are giving away! Of course, this needs to come early on because this will let people know whether the Instagram giveaway is for them.
In the next few lines, you’ll be sharing the rules to enter the Instagram giveaway.
What Rules To Use For An Instagram Giveaway
@james_trevino has the perfect caption for his Instagram giveaway. His rules are simple, easy and subtle enough for anyone to enter.
By subtle, we just mean that it won’t mess up your Instagram game. If one of the rules was to post about it ten times on your feed, no one would want to enter, because it would ruin the look of their feed.
Utilizing your Instagram story is the best way to host an Instagram giveaway.
The best rules when hosting an Instagram giveaway include:
- Following you. Of course, to be eligible to win the prize(s), you’ll want the people entering to follow you! A huge reason for hosting is to grow your account.
- Follow any partnering accounts. If you’re teaming up with a brand, or even friends, make sure you tag them in the caption and state it as a rule that anyone entering follows them, too. For example, @james_trevino has teamed up with five friends. In reality, they will be each be putting money in to purchase the prizes! That’s why it’s a rule to follow all of them.
- Like the photo. The more likes, the more Instagram will push your photo out into the online world.
- Comment on the photo. For the same reason as before, it’s important to encourage interaction on the photo itself! Certainly, it’s a good idea to have those comments be tagging 2 or 3 friends. This will entice other people to check out the photo since they’ve now been tagged in the comments! They will want to enter the giveaway, too, which means more followers and more interaction. The cycle continues!
- Ask your followers a question. If all you do is ask them to tag friends, it doesn’t seem so personal. Ask them a question relating to the item you’re giving away. For example, if you’re giving away a set of movies, ask them what their all-time favorite movie was as a kid!
- Story shoutouts. If you want even more people to be aware of your Instagram giveaway, encourage a story shoutout to count as an extra entry! All they need to do is shoutout your feed, tag you and keep it live for 24 hours.
Tip: If you are asking people to shout you out in their stories, it can get difficult to keep track! So, ask them to comment a specific emoji on your giveaway photo so you can have an account of who has an extra entry, and who doesn’t. In fact, ask them to use a less popular emoji so you know for certain they’ve done it right! For example, what about the watermelon emoji? 🍉 It doesn’t get used enough!
Include Specific Details
Now that you’ve got your caption and rules set out, you need to include the boring, yet important, information!
- How long is the giveaway open for? Usually, a week is a good idea!
- Is it open internationally or just in specific parts of the world? This is good to think about if you’re the one shipping out the items.
- When does the giveaway close? Give the exact time and time zone.
- When will the winner be chosen? People will be impatiently waiting to hear if they’ve won so give your followers a time frame to work with!
- State whether or not the Instagram giveaway is affiliated with Instagram.
- Since you’ll be asking for people’s addresses, make sure you state that they must be 18 or over, or have parental permission, to enter the giveaway.
How To Choose A Winner For Your Instagram Giveaway
Now that you’ve hosted your Instagram giveaway, invited a whole new audience to your platform and got all the entries in, it’s time to choose a winner!
Of course, it needs to be fair, so the best way to do that is to use a random generator.
Together with the other hosts, if there are any, you must gather all the entries into a spreadsheet. Don’t forget the extra entries! If someone has an extra entry, you need to put their name in twice.
Once all the entries are in a spreadsheet, check how many entries there are. For example, if there are 1,000 entries, you need to put that number into your random number generator.
You can get a random number generator by Googling ‘random number generator’. Simply put the number of entries in and click ‘generate’.
If you get the number 32, go to your spreadsheet and find the 32nd entry!
Tip: If you have lots of entries, have each person hosting randomly choose a name from their own comments and then put that handful of entries into a random number generator. This means less work to do!
Once you’ve got your winner, announce it in your stories and the caption of the Instagram giveaway post.
From there, it’s a dialogue between you and the winner to get their details so you can send them their prize!
You will probably notice a drop in followers once the Instagram giveaway closes. Unfortunately, some people only follow to win free stuff! But, hopefully, you’ve targeted the right audience with your products so that most of the new followers stick around for a while.
