11 Instagram Giveaway Concepts That Will Get You New Followers

January 5, 2023

So that you’re planning an Instagram giveaway—how beneficiant!

Right here’s a step-by-step information to throwing a profitable Instagram giveaway, full with suggestions for laying down the principles, selling your giveaway and choosing a winner — plus 11 examples from manufacturers which can be doing it proper.

Let’s get began, you selfless, noble giver, you.

Bonus: Download 4 free, customizable social media contest templates to help you get started promoting your contests on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

What is an Instagram giveaway?

An Instagram giveaway (or an Instagram contest) is a type of promotion involving a brand or creator gifting a product or service to an Instagram user. Users can enter the contest based on criteria defined by the giveaway organizer.

Here are some common reasons why brands throw giveaways on Instagram:

To get new followers. Contests tend to bring in new viewers to your page.
To engage their audience. Giveaways give your audience a chance to interact with your brand and your content—they bring in algorithm-friendly engagement in the form of likes and comments.
To collect user-generated content. Contests can be a great opportunity to allow your audience to generate (free and creative) content for your page.
To give back to their audience. Who would we be without our followers? Hosting an Instagram giveaway helps build your relationship with your audience and give them something in return for their support.

How to do an Instagram giveaway: 6 steps

4. Publish your contest (at the right time)

And we’re live! Publish your contest using Hootsuite’s Best Time to Publish characteristic to make sure that your giveaway is being seen by the utmost variety of followers.

Try for free

You may as well use Hootsuite to see how nicely the giveaway is performing in analytics, and reply to questions in your DMs or feedback utilizing Hootsuite’s inbox

5. Promote your contest

Promote your Instagram giveaway as broadly as potential. You’ll wish to share it in your Instagram Tales in addition to some other social media platform your model makes use of. Put up in regards to the giveaway a number of occasions (“One week left to enter,” “Final likelihood to enter,” and many others.) to ensure that nobody misses it.

6. Observe entries with a social media administration instrument

In the event you’re working a contest, you’ll most likely wish to see some concrete numbers proving the way it helps your web page’s site visitors.

Hootsuite is the proper useful resource to assist run and observe contests. Contest posts will be scheduled with the Planner. Feedback will be tracked and answered within the Inbox, and mentions/hashtag utilization will be tracked through Streams.

Study extra about how Hootsuite may help you with Instagram contests (and, nicely, your whole different social media efforts):

Instagram giveaway template

We’ve put collectively a free social media contest template that covers entry strategies, phrases of the giveaway, prize guidelines and disclosures about how winners will likely be chosen. In the event you’re caught on correctly phrase your giveaway guidelines, begin right here.

Bonus: Download 4 free, customizable social media contest templates to help you get started promoting your contests on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

3 recommended Instagram giveaway pickers

Need a random comment picker to decide your Instagram contest winner? Try these.

1. Saver Front

Saverfront’s picker instrument is particularly for Instagram feedback. It’s free, and also you don’t need to log in or give any private info to make use of it. You may select what number of winners you need and modify standards like mentions and hashtags.

2. Wask.co

Wask’s instrument can also be for IG feedback. It’s free to make use of as soon as, and after that asks for a login (however presents a free plan).

3. IG Comment Picker

In case you have lower than 150 feedback to select from, it is a good instrument to make use of (it’s free for 150 feedback). You additionally don’t need to log in or enroll to make use of it.

11 Instagram contest examples

In the event you’re trying to find inspiration to your subsequent Instagram giveaway, hashtags are your finest good friend: attempt looking out #contest, #giveaway, #instagramcontest, #iggiveaway, #contestalert, and different related variations to seek out tens of millions of examples of contests — or scroll down the record of inspiring examples beneath.

The next 11 giveaways exhibit completely different contest methods, entry strategies, prize concepts and artistic methods to advertise your giveaway.

1. Like, remark, and/or share to enter

That is the best type of IG giveaway. Your viewers enters by interacting with the put up (by liking, commenting or sharing—and put up importantly, following). This makes coming into tremendous straightforward; it’s low-effort, high-reward.

This Instagram contest consists of sharing to a narrative as a type of entry…

… and this one includes saving the put up…

…whereas this one asks customers to remark (and tag associates within the feedback part, extra on that later) to enter.

Steal this technique

Preserve your advertising targets in thoughts when deciding your entry strategies. Do you wish to acquire followers, get likes or feedback, up your “share” stats, and many others.?
Attempt to maintain coming into so simple as potential—complicated entry strategies are a recipe for low engagement. Make coming into your contest a lazy individual’s dream.
Take into consideration long-term development when selecting entry strategies. For instance, “wish to enter” solely will get you likes on a single put up, however “observe to enter” has the potential to earn you everlasting supporters.

2. Tag a good friend to enter

Asking customers to tag their associates within the feedback—and counting every of these feedback as an entry—is principally an evil genius transfer. It signifies that the entrant’s associates will get notified after they’re tagged, encouraging them to additionally enter the competition.

If one person tags three associates, these three associates tag three extra associates, and so forth, fairly quickly you’ll have taken over the world. After all, not everybody will do that… we’re fairly sure that friendships have ended over serial tagging. Even so, it’s a really efficient technique for development.

Tagging a good friend is much less of an evil genius transfer when it truly has one thing to do together with your model, or the giveaway itself. For instance, in case you’re freely giving a spa bundle for 2, you would possibly ask of us to tag the individual they’d carry with them in the event that they gained.

This contest for shirts which can be dyed with blueberries (cool) asks customers to “tag somebody who’s berry particular” within the feedback. They’re freely giving two shirts, probably one to the competition winner and one to the tagged good friend.

Steal this technique

Make tagging a good friend within the feedback a technique of entry to extend your giveaway’s attain.
Take into consideration how tagging a good friend can present worth to the person, as nicely—for instance, you may give away two prizes (so the tagged good friend additionally will get a prize). In any other case, you threat your contest merely annoying all of the tagged associates.

3. Give away a brand new product

A brand new product launch is a superb purpose to host a contest—it helps create hype across the product and share information of the launch together with your viewers.

Plus, a recent product robotically has extra perceived worth, even when the precise financial worth of the prize isn’t tremendous excessive (for instance, this giveaway of ready-to-eat boxed waffles).

Steal this technique

Think about incorporating contests into your advertising technique when launching new merchandise.
Emphasize the “newness” of the product when selling this contest—if potential, contemplate timing the competition so the winner is the primary individual to expertise the product.

4. Associate with one other model

Collaborating with one other model or influencer robotically expands the attain of your giveaway as a result of the competition has the potential to achieve each your followers and your collaborator’s followers.

You may companion with a model on each the competition promotion and the prize—for instance, within the contest beneath, a reusable takeout container model collaborated with a vegan meals producer, and the prize consists of services or products from each manufacturers.

Or, a contest collaboration can simply embody a prize from one of many manufacturers, whereas the opposite collaborator merely promotes the competition—as is the case with this marriage ceremony registry firm x KitchenAid collab.

Both method, a very powerful consider any collaboration is that your collaborator’s model values align with your individual. Reusable containers and vegan meals producers each have the aim of sustainability, whereas the marriage registry firm and KitchenAid have crossovers of their industries.

Steal this technique

Associate with one other model to faucet into a brand new viewers to your giveaway.
Guarantee that the model’s values align with your individual (along with this being observe usually, it additionally makes their followers extra more likely to love your content material).
If it is sensible, make the prize embody one thing from each manufacturers.

5. Rejoice a vacation or big day

You don’t really want an excuse to have a contest—folks love free stuff at any time of 12 months—however in case you can have fun a vacation or event with a contest, do it.

This is usually a private event (for instance, your model’s anniversary or reaching 2000 followers) or a publicly-recognized one (Valentine’s Day, Christmas, Mom’s Day).

This contest hosted by a grocer celebrates Worldwide Ladies’s Day by freely giving a product from a female-owned firm.

Steal this technique

Centre your giveaway round an upcoming vacation or particular date to offer your contest a way of timeliness and event.
In the event you can, make the competition prize one thing that pertains to the event (for instance, give away a zero-waste product for Earth Day or a sweet cane-scented candle for Christmas).

6. Make a artistic carousel

When planning your contest, take into consideration the way you’re going to promote it (in any case, folks can’t enter in the event that they don’t understand it exists). Create attention-grabbing—and informative—visual content to assist unfold the phrase about your giveaway.

For instance, the Instagram contest beneath makes use of one lengthy graphic posted as three separate carousel pictures. It creates a cool impact when scrolling, and likewise shares quite a lot of details about the competition and the prize with out being too visually overwhelming.

Steal this technique

Incorporate a advertising plan into your Instagram contest technique.
Create visuals that talk all the things that customers must know in regards to the contest, with out bogging them down with info.
Think about using carousel posts with one super-sharable cowl picture, then particulars in regards to the prize in later pictures.

7. Make a Reel

In terms of social media advertising, movies are the secret in 2023. Strive making a Reel to attract viewers in and promote your contest.

For the giveaway beneath, the creator made a Reel that first engages customers with robust visuals and sounds (an ASMR-ish cooking video) and features a contest within the description. He retains the format easy, identical to his non-contest Reels. It’s not merely a Reel that markets the competition; it supplies worth to his viewers as nicely.

Steal this technique

Use Instagram reels to market your contests and giveaways.
Make your giveaway reels match the remainder of your content material, so it doesn’t really feel misplaced.
Incorporate worth past the competition announcement within the reel to make the video extra partaking.

8. Make it a paid partnership

As a creator, paid partnerships are among the best methods to make money on Instagram—and as a enterprise, paid partnerships are an amazing technique for increasing your audience and getting some main avenue cred.

Do your analysis into creators or influencers that may assist market your contest (and naturally, your corporation’s product) to seek out the proper match.

Associate with a trusted creator who has a powerful portfolio for one of the best outcomes—for instance, the cute visuals within the paid partnership contest beneath.

Steal this technique

In the event you’re a enterprise working an Instagram contest, do your analysis into creators that might be able to aid you put it up for sale.
When you’ve discovered the proper creator, work with them to develop the competition content material (and pay them for his or her work).
Make sure that to mark all posts as a paid partnership, or threat Instagram eradicating the posts or flagging your account.

9. Host a photograph contest

Photograph contest have been round for the reason that daybreak of—nicely—cameras, they usually’re a useful technique for connecting with artists and getting some superior user-generated content.

In case your web page advertises merchandise you possibly can ask entrants to put up a photograph together with your wares. You may as well encourage your viewers to put up a photograph that merely follows a theme.

Contests like these are additionally a good way to gather testimonials. You may ask customers to share their favourite private tales surrounding the model, product, or ones that relate to your web page’s ethos. The selection is yours, simply be certain that it’s made clear within the guidelines that you’ve the precise to repost any of the entries.