Planning an Instagram giveaway? You’ve decided to run a competition on your Instagram account most likely as a tactic to grow your following, but where do you start?

Instagram giveaways can be amazing to expand your audience and to get your business in front of new potential customers. Giveaways get shared, and they really can have a positive impact. A client of mine recently added 8,000 new followers from a giveaway.

Done wrong, giveaways could also bring issues, like a totally unengaged audience, or even legal strife if Instagram guidelines are not adhered to.

Here are all the do’s and don’t’s of running a competition on Instagram.

These are tips only, shared from my own experience of running Instagram giveaways. The tips are not to be used in place of legal advice.

Plan your Instagram giveaway

Be strategic with your Instagram giveaway

WHY ARE YOU RUNNING THE COMPETITION?

  • What is your goal? Is it to boost engagement, get your brand in front of more people, attract new followers or to give something back to the community who supports you. Pitch it accordingly.

WHO ARE YOU LOOKING TO ATTRACT?

  • Be careful how you run your competition, a giveaway can leave you with lots of unengaged followers who are not your target audience. Design your giveaway to attract your target audience.

Make entry easy

EASE OF ENTRY.

  • A comp where you follow, like the post and tag one friend, is plenty.

GO FOR QUALITY OVER QUALITY.

  • Asking users to think of 3 people to tag takes time. I will only ever tag someone I think a product is perfect for. Request 1 tag, and reward more tags with more entries.

COLLABORATE WITH NO MORE THAN 2-3 BUSINESSES.

  • Asking to follow 10 accounts is also a big no-no. I for one want to follow the right accounts that support my business and personal journey.

Make the giveaway easy for you

SHARING TO STORIES IS HARD TO TRACK.

  • Asking users to share the giveaway to stories will undoubtedly increase exposure.
  • But unless you have a way of monitoring who has shared, then don’t include this as a condition of entry. Particularly if you have a large account or expect a lot of entries. You will not want to manually track who has and hasn’t shared the giveaway to stories. I am not aware of a tool that can do this. Let me know of one if you do.
  • Still it’s good to encourage sharing. I usually say something like ‘If you get a chance to share to your stories, that would be amazing.”

Add Terms and conditions

ALWAYS CHECK INSTAGRAM’S PROMOTION GUIDELINES.

  • They change (like everything else on social media). You must acknowledge that the promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Instagram. Read Instagram’s promotion guidelines here

WRITE TERMS AND CONDITIONS

  • Include them in the post and post a detailed version to your website. These will protect you. Terns and conditions might include the geographical location of entrants e.g. UK entry only or that entrants must be over 18. You could also include the entry mechanic and how the winner will be drawn e.g. “the winner will be selected at random from all Instagram entries and will be announced on this post and in our stories.”

DETAIL THE EXACT PRIZE

  • Do not leave any details of the prize open to the imagination. Be exact.

Hashtags are important

AVOID GENERIC GIVEAWAY HASHTAGS.

  • #Giveaway #Competition etc attract serial competition entrants. These people will very likely not be your target customer. They may unfollow once the competition is over or may remain as unengaged inactive followers. Yes your numbers will go up, but that will mean nothing in terms of driving business to you.

USE HASHTAGS WHICH CONNECT YOU TO YOUR TARGET CUSTOMER.

  • This will be far more effective in attracting the right audience, who will stay and be interested in what you have to say.
  • As always use 30.

Expect Spam Activity

GIVEAWAYS aren’t sadly as straightforward as they used to be. They can attract spammers – hideous accounts who want to make money out of your entrants.

EXPECT SPAM ACCOUNTS TO IMPERSONATE YOU

  • Spam accounts may pop up impersonating your business.
  • Warn your audience that these are likely including something like this on your giveaway post.
    • “If you receive any DMs about the next competition steps or get followed by an account pretending to be us, please ignore them. It’s a scammer. Report and block. We have one account and will never ask for banking details.”
    • or “We only have this one account and we will not contact you about the giveaway in any other way. Be mindful of spam accounts that might pop up.”
  • Letting your audience know of the likelihood of spammers will help to educate the Instagram community.

IF SPAM ACCOUNTS DO APPEAR

  • and your audience starts to let you know. Ask them to report and block the spam account. You can share a message to your stories showing the fake account.

TIPS TO REDUCE ISSUES

  • Short competition periods may work better.
  • Switch off the comments on the post once you have made the draw. This will hide all details of entrants and protect them from any further spamming.

Don’t let the scammers put you off!! Just be prepared. Giveaways can be amazing for your account.

Instagram support

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