An Ultimate Step By Step Guide – How To Make Your Instagram Contests Stand-Out In A Crowd

If you haven’t joined Instagram, you need to consider giving it a shot. Seriously, aren’t you curious about how this photo and video sharing social media platform got a massive number of users in just three years?

This tremendous growth is indeed appealing to marketers, who would like their brand images to be among the 16 billion photos shared?

Frankly, it is never too late to sign up for a free Instagram account. But what should you do after creating an account? You could try to get more followers and likes through an Instagram contest. It is, of course, an easy task to run a contest on Instagram. But you do need to capitalize on the commitment and participation of users. So, how can you do that?

Steps Involved In Running An Instagram Contest

1)  Plan Goals And Objectives

Before you jump into running a contest, you must plan it out. The key to organizing an interactive and successful contest is to have clear goals. And they need to align with the behavior and interest of the target audience. So before you start developing your brand presence or creating a list of followers, keep in mind that you need a specific goal.

Narrow down your focus on the kind of audience you are trying to reach, and the types of posts they like to see on your Instagram feed.

2) Select The Contest

Compared to other social media platforms, Instagram doesn’t have various promotional limitations. This means that you have the chance to be more creative with your contest. Some of the contests you can try out are – Comment Contests, Like Contests, and Photo Challenge Contests.

Like contests are one of the easiest contests to host. Here you are simply asking users to like your photo to win. Comment contests are similar to these and here you allow users to post comments related to a photo on your Instagram feed.

One of the most popular types of Instagram contests are the photo challenge contests. Here you need to inform people who take part in the contest to post a photo on their personal account and use the specific hashtag given by you.

3) Get The Perfect Hashtag

The key to any engaging Instagram contest is a good hashtag. Without it, there is no link between the content being generated and the contest itself. In other words, hashtags help in developing the brand by serving as a tool for sharing and bringing in participation.

However, it is tricky creating the perfect hashtag especially if your contest has a timeframe. In that case, you have to create a hashtag which you are not going to use again and again. Each hashtag you use must be short, universal, memorable and rare.

4) Communicate The Rules

When compared to other social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, there are less promotional rules in Instagram. All you have to do is two things. First, you must acknowledge that the promotion is not endorsed, sponsored, or associated with Instagram.

Next, never inaccurately tag content or motivate users to tag content inaccurately. Having fewer limitations, the rules of the contests can be structured according to your needs.

5) Define The Theme

Since most Instagram contests involve UGC (User-Generated Content), it is necessary to select a theme so that users understand what kind of videos and pictures to post. Ideally, you must select a theme that can align with your product and service or market.

6) Determine How Winners Are Selected

An important part of a well-constructed contest is telling participants how the winner will be selected. Most contests determine winners through votes or jury decisions. Voting is one of the best methods to boost the virality of the contest by making participants compete for the most number of likes. But for the sake of overall fairness and quality, the jury method is the best.

7) Select An Appropriate Award

While determining what kind of award your contestants should get, you must take into account various factors like budgetary constraints, target audiences, and how aggressive your goals are.

Keep in mind that by asking your audience to take part in a contest; you are telling them to take an action on something. Also, the interests of your targeted audience must be kept in mind when deciding on the prize.

8) Promotion

Once you have a solid plan in place, you need to promote your contest. So, what is the perfect platform to start spreading the word? You have various options, and the possibilities are quite endless. Some of the promotional mediums you can use are blogs, emails, and social media platforms.

Final Verdict

Now that you have the required arsenal to run an engaging and successful Instagram contest, the time has come to put this knowledge to work. If your efforts are successful, you will end up expanding and engaging your audience along with getting interesting content to inspire future contests.

Tags: instagram contests instagram for business instagram marketing