Julia Frank – Blogging Karma

Instagram is a famous social media platform with over 400 million active users across the globe. Many brands are making the best use of Instagram, setting strategies to excite followers and build brand awareness. Let us learn how to promote contests, which is one the best ways to obtain more followers and amplify your reach. 1. Set a Goal for your Instagram Contest The first and foremost step of running a contest is to define goals for your Contest. You may want to generate engagement, increase following, more people sign up for your email or to produce more user-generated content. Contests are a fabulous way to grow your audience and build your reach on Instagram. When you ask your followers to "tag a friend in the comments," your existing followers share your content with their closed ones by tagging. If they have the same interests and love your Instagram contest, they would step their foot in and tag their friends, increasing the followers count. Suppose you promote a product or service; running giveaways could be a fantastic way to get your followers excited. 2. Declare the Contest on Instagram Alert the followers by announcing the Contest on Instagram through a post, which is a great way to award for following you. You have to explain how to participate, the prizes offered, how people can access terms and conditions; it could also include asking users to complete specific tasks like following your page or tagging friends, like or commenting on posts, etc. Also, make sure to use unique hashtags and mentions. When you use hashtags rightly, it is evident that your Contest would go viral overnight. The use of improper hashtags leads your promotion to get ignored in a stream of inappropriate content. 3. Determine the Entry Criteria for your Contest Your entry criteria rely upon your aim. You could ask participants to like your post and tag your friend, attracting new followers. Also, you need to drive traffic to your web page or any pages on your website; in such cases, you can ask them to click the link on the bio that directs them to check the criteria from your website. 4. Put the contest link in your bio Posting links on posts and comments are not allowed on Instagram, so it's good to share your contest link in your profile bio and use it to promote the Contest; specify that followers can access it through the bio link; it stays there as long as the Contest is open. Make sure your posts focus on alerting people about the campaign and that they can enter the Contest via the bio link and get them excited. You could also promote the Contest by linking to a photo gallery of the entries. 5. Post Giveaways on Instagram Story Instagram stories are a great way to build reach and engage followers to your Contest. Though you can't use stories to run contests, you could use stories to promote contests—posting stories with swipe-up links to link to entry criteria or photo galleries. Businesses can use stories to alert followers about giveaways, add prizes, and remind them when it will end. But, you must have up to ten thousand followers to unlock it. Suppose you don't have that many followers; you can direct people to click the link in the bio. 6. Put Up a Time-Limit in your Contest Inform followers about how long the giveaway would last by mentioning it in your caption, and when the time is over, make sure to include "Giveaway Closed." For example, you may post, "Giveaway! Giveaway! Over the next 48 hours, tag a friend in the comments and mention the favorite place to travel". The time limit would create urgency and make followers interact more quickly, making your giveaway stay on top of followers' feeds. 7. Use other Platforms to Promote Contest Why stick to a single channel when you can take advantage of every other platform to promote contests, attract more people, increase participation, and add value to your campaign. Instagram lets you synchronize posts to Facebook, which is an efficient feature. You can start an Instagram contest and spread the link over to other networks by having the brand's hashtag in your posts, prizes you are offering, and a quick link to the Contest. Also, these days, we could see trends for sharing Instagram contests on Twitter too. 8. Attract Loyal Followers with Instagram Ads As Facebook has taken over Instagram, it has come up with some innovative options for advertisers, running independent ads on Instagram or Facebook or putting up a single campaign on both channels. On each network, you could split them up and check analytics to strategize your campaign. Instagram lets you add a link in the post captions, or you could even have call-to-action buttons on the post, hence targeting the right audience for your giveaway and allowing them to sign up quickly. Follow the steps to create Instagram ads for stories: Go to the ads manager and click quick creation to create an ad.Use the Reach option to choose the brand visibility, reach, video view, conversion, app installs, lead generation, or traffic objective.Choose edit placements.Upload your image and other information required to create your ad.Finally, Tap Confirm. 9. Announce Contest at Point of Sale It's an excellent way to grab people while shopping for your product, be it either online store or in-store. This way, you could make customers happier and rewarded and let you garner user-generated content. When people visit your instore, at the entryway, ask them to capture pictures at the photo stage with your brand's images as the backdrop and post them on Instagram with a mention + hashtag contest. It could create a buzz on Instagram, making it go viral. 10. Publish with Photo Gallery When you run a mention + hashtag contest or an Instagram photo contest, Instagram lets you display all the entries on a public page where people can view and share with friends and vote for great ones. Photo contests with votes have greater engagement. 11. Motivate People to Share There are different ways to share on Instagram. Share posts to your stories, or send them through DM. Spreading the word about contests drives traffic leading to significant participation. Besides, you could also motivate your followers to share the contest details to attract more participation, more traffic, and get automatic likes for Instagram, leading your post to become visible on the explore page and generate significant sales. When participants set foot in a contest by sharing a picture, ask them to share the image with their friends to support them with votes. 12. Follow Up with Participants Running an Instagram contest or Giveaways is an excellent way to gain followers, increase brand visibility, and capture leads. To have a high engagement rate, you will have to have a follow-up with your participants. Show that you care about them by sharing posts or stories to declare the winner's name, thank them for making efforts in the Contest, or send them a DM. Final Words Following the ways mentioned above will let you run a successful Instagram giveaway that drives the perfect participants, achieves goals, and establishes your business. https://youtu.be/bYPem_6rXrc