There is not a single person in this world who does not like free stuff and thousands of people everyday win free gifts and prizes through giveaways. Social media influencers and brands conduct these giveaways in a bid to increase brand awareness, get loyal followers, and boost engagement with them.
The most popular social media platform for giveaways is Instagram as more than 62.5% of users research brands and products here. If you know how to plan a giveaway on Instagram using right hashtags, then you can engage with your target audience and generate quality leads.
With tens of thousands of entries, an Instagram giveaway picker will help you select the winner of your contest. You won’t have to manually go through every entry, everything will be done automatically and a final winner will be picked. This guide will help with how to plan a giveaway on Instagram and gain a loyal following on the platform.
Benefits of Hosting a Successful Instagram Giveaway
Thinking of how to keep track of Instagram giveaway entries and then how to pick Instagram giveaway winner? Learn about it fast as you can reap the following benefits when you conduct it successfully:
- Higher excitement and interest from your followers which leads to more participants. This will boost your engagement rate and Instagram will consider your page worth promoting to the public.
- As more and more people like, share, comment, and tag on your giveaway posts, they will reach a wider audience. People will get aware about your brand and recommend it to their loved ones.
- Your giveaway will attract many followers who will stay with you for the long-term. You’ll build a loyal community that will regularly purchase your offerings and promote them further.
- It is the perfect way to show and educate people about your services and products. Your followers will stay excited for future giveaways, and also for the launch of new products and services.
Steps to Run a Successful Instagram Giveaway
One of the most effective and strategic ways to engage with your target audience and build your follower count on Instagram is through a giveaway. The following steps will help you plan everything right from the beginning till the end -
1. Consider Your Goals & Aim Behind the Giveaway
Before you think about how to keep track of Instagram giveaway entries or how to pick Instagram giveaway winner, you must consider your main motive and goal behind running the contest. This ensures that the giveaway will help you achieve your business objectives.
Some brands do it to boost their engagement or follower count, while some do it to raise awareness among their target audience. You can grow traffic, collect content generated by users, promote new services or products, get more likes and comments, etc. Finalize your goals before you think of how to plan a giveaway on Instagram.
2. Set the Entry Criteria Depending on Your Goal
Based on your goals, the entry criteria for your giveaway will vary. If you want more brand awareness, you can ask users to share your post, you should ask them to tag or mention their friends in the post if you want more followers and engagement. Ask them to submit a reel or photo if you require user-generated content.
You can even consider different types of contests like give a caption, collaborations, trivia, hashtags, challenges, and more. Also, it’s hard to track everything so you must use an Instagram giveaway picker if you are wondering how to keep track of Instagram giveaway entries.
3. Pick a Prize or Gift to Giveaway to Winners
Another vital aspect of the contest is to choose the gift or prize for the giveaway winner. Make sure that the gift is something related to your brand so that your followers have an interest in getting it. Accounts that hold such contests gain followers 70% quicker than those who don’t.
Giveaways are also great to generate hype around a new service or product. Followers will love the idea of winning something new before it is launched for everyone to purchase. You can keep the prize matching the ongoing season or any festival that is approaching. We all think of how to plan a giveaway on Instagram but forget about the final prize or reward.
4. Set Rules & Regulations for Your Giveaway
Any contest should have a proper set of rules and regulations so that the playing field is level and everyone has an equal chance of winning. You can make rules regarding how many times a follower should comment, how many shares or mentions are needed, which hashtag needs to be used, etc.
Before you think of how to pick Instagram giveaway winner, ensure that all rules are followed. An Instagram giveaway picker checks if the entries are eligible before finalizing on a winner. There will be thousands of entries who have not completed the necessary tasks or not followed all rules. The tool will filter out such options, and choose the right winner randomly.
5. Make Use of Relevant Hashtags
For a successful Instagram giveaway, you need to use the right hashtags in your post or story. This will put your post in front of your relevant audience and also show up in the explore page. Also you should use the #giveaway if you want more visibility on your post. You can even create a hashtag for your brand and use it in your posts. Any post with more than one hashtag has an engagement rate of 12.6% more than posts without hashtags.
Using correct, relevant hashtags can also pop your post up in the Explore page, and it will then be visible to millions of more people. Many more users will discover and engage with your giveaway post which can potentially boost your followers by a lot. Some people may like your page and show interest in knowing about your brands and its offerings, apart from taking part in the giveaway.
Image source: Pexels
6. Promote Your Giveaway on Different Social Media Platforms
Even though you are running your giveaway on Instagram, you should also promote it on other social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, etc. This will give maximum visibility to your contest and it will be easier for interested people to share it forward. Millions of people spend most of their time on Snapchat, YouTube, Twitter, and more.
Instagram is not on their priority list of social media. When you promote your giveaway on these platforms, you can tap into a completely new set of audience. However, do remember that an Instagram giveaway picker tool will only pick up contestants from your post on Instagram. You can even offer extra rewards for people who come from other platforms to follow your IG page and take part in the giveaway.
7. Keep a Short Duration for the Giveaway
Set up a time limit for your giveaway contest so that your followers are not confused. Try to keep a short duration so that it creates a sense of urgency among your followers and they take the required steps as quickly as they can. Almost 32.5% of brands hold a giveaway every month.
If you run the competition for a longer time, it may affect the effectiveness and hype related to it. You can enter the start and end date in the Instagram giveaway picker and it will keep note of this. Also, post reminders and alerts as posts or on stories so that your followers stay excited about it.
8. Use an Instagram Giveaway Picker Tool
Usually, there are thousands of followers who take part in such contests and people think of how to keep track of Instagram giveaway entries and how to pick Instagram giveaway winner. You can check out all entries yourself but it will be a really hard and time-consuming task.
The best option for you is to use an Instagram giveaway picker tool that offers all the features you need. Such tools will ignore all the spam entries and pick out a random winner of the giveaway. Remember to notify your followers when the contest ends and announce the winner publicly.
9. Track & Analyze Giveaway Results
After a successful Instagram giveaway, you must track and analyze its results. You will know if you made progress towards your objectives and can also store relevant information regarding your followers. You can use this data to contact interested followers, tell them about your offerings, and close deals with them quicker.
Also, compare your page statistics before and after the giveaway to see how it has performed. These analytics will also help you optimize your social media strategy and the content you share with your followers. Also, you can also use the analysis and various statistics to plan future giveaways in a better and more sophisticated manner.
Conclusion
No matter what type of business or industry you are in, giveaways are a great way of reaching out to your target audience, boosting brand engagement, and promoting your products and services.
For those wondering how to plan a giveaway on Instagram, our guide features a step-by-step process. If you want everything to go smoothly, then we recommend you to use an Instagram giveaway picker for your contest. This will reduce your effort and ensure that a fair, lucky winner is chosen.
