With more than a billion regular users, Instagram is where it’s at. But if you’re publishing often and getting nowhere, something’s wrong. Using successful Instagram contest ideas is a great approach to boost participation.
Give your followers a chance to win a reward or get their content featured on your brand’s Instagram .
Are you prepared to engage your audience? Let’s take a look at 11 distinct Instagram contest ideas and examples, as well as some pointers for setting up your own Instagram giveaway or contest.
Use Instagram Giveaways and Contests to Raise Engagement
You may interact with your Instagram followers in more than a dozen different ways. Brands, on the other hand, place a premium on hearing from their customers. Comparatively, all you have to do to “like” a post is click the “like” button. Instagram’s formula naturally gives more weight to comments than likes. Your post’s visibility in followers’ feeds, search results, and Explore pages will increase with each engagement.
One Instagram Contest Idea Is to Pose a Question
A question contest is one type of contest that is sure to increase interaction on Instagram. What’s more, you can find out who your supporters are. Just announce to your audience that you’ll be selecting a comment at random to award a person with a cool gift. Use Instagram’s Winner Picker to choose a commenter as the lucky winner.
Host a contest where participants must answer questions in the form of a comment, such as:
- Answer the question using predictive text and share your thoughts in the thread’s comments section.
- Look up your birth month (or zodiac sign) and the answer will appear.
- Debunking a Myth In your opinion, what is the most common misconception about you?
- Share a bad habit you’ve kicked forever in the comments.
Get More Feedback by Hosting an Emoji Competition
Adobe found that “65% of emoji users are more comfortable expressing their emotions through emojis than a phone call.” A great approach to get people talking is to arrange an Instagram contest or giveaway that encourages participants to use emoticons in their entries.
Make Instagram contest captions that resonate with your audience, such as:
- Pick an emoticon that best summarises our company!
- What’s your go-to emoji for texting?
- What emoji best represents our company?
- Give us a tour of your five most-used emojis.
Freebies for Tagging Friends
Instagram contests that require entrants to tag their friends in the comments serve a dual purpose: increasing participation and audience size. You may expect your fans to engage with your material and spread the word to their networks. In addition, the people they tag are eligible to participate in your Instagram giveaway or comment on your contest.
You can specify in your rules that users must tag a friend in order to participate, or you can offer extra entries to those who do so. Possible captions for a tagging contest are:
- Leave a comment and tag a friend (more tags equal more chances to win)!
- Leave a comment tagging a friend to enter.
- Share this contest with a friend who would appreciate a win!
- Send a gift card from your favourite eatery to your pals by tagging them in this post.
- Increase your Instagram following with a giveaway.
When someone visits your business profile and clicks the “Follow” button, they are engaging with your account. Increasing your number of followers may do wonders for your audience, brand recognition, and the exposure of your marketing campaigns.
The best strategy to increase your number of followers is to stipulate that contest entrants must be followers in order to win. Here are some contest ideas you may use on Instagram to find your target audience.
Join Our Community to Enter to Win
Include a requirement for participants to follow your company’s account as part of the contest rules. Instagram posts are great, but you should also make additional material that will encourage people to follow you. When announcing the victor, include a call to action (CTA) in your message. As a result, more people will follow your brand or subscribe to your email newsletter so they don’t miss out on future promotions.
Below is an example of a post by PrimaLash on Instagram in which the requirement that contestants follow two accounts is stated twice.
Ideas for Branded Hashtag Competitions
Branded hashtag contests and giveaways are great ways to increase exposure for your business. Instagram contests that make use of hashtags are not only effective, but may be expanded to include participants from other social media platforms at omnichannel events.
When a user posts an image with your branded hashtag, their followers can easily find your profile by searching for that hashtag. Instagram users can promote your brand by using your hashtag in post captions and Instagram Stories.
Increase Instagram Likes and Comments with Freebies and Games
You can only share content from public Instagram profiles, and the quickest method to do that is by tapping the button that says “Add post to your story.” Instagram users who make an extra effort to spread the word can expect to see their posts appear higher in their followers’ feeds.
Instagram Stories is used by over 500 million accounts every day, so encouraging fans to post your contest or giveaway is a great way to expose your brand to new customers.
Instagram: Save, Repost, and Share for a Chance to Win
People who share your post on their Instagram Story might either gain more entries into your contest or be required to do so. If you want people to save your post or share it on their own page, you can ask them to do so or give them permission to do so.
Create a high-quality image and a captivating caption for maximum interaction. Make your material more noticeable in people’s feeds so that they are more likely to share, bookmark, or repost it.