14. HOW TO RUN A CONTEST ON INSTAGRAM

Nowadays it's very easy to gain a lot of followers through contests on Instagram, or giveaways as we call them. They might be organized by a brand or influencer and can run up until 10-20-ish hosts. We hear you asking yourself what a host is during a contest: it's actually some people organizing the giveaway all together. This means each participating host will link back to someone from the group to follow and by this they all gain thousands of followers. In the end they put all the results from the different profiles together and choose a winner. Other know this as well by the name 'loop' giveaway. Most of the time we're talking about expensive gifts such as make up, iPhones, MacBooks, camera's,... To gain back the money they let each host pay an 'entrance' fee. Most of the times it starts from 50$ to 75$ but it can easily run up 'til 500$ or 900$ if you want to participate in the loop. Crazy numbers right? The bigger the hosts accounts, the more you pay.

However there are also brands or individuals organizing contests by themselves. Stores or businesses can give away a product of their niche (think about a nice handbag, a dinner for two, jewelry,...) and influencers will often do it in collaboration with them to give the brand some extra visibility. But how do you run a contest the right way so you reach the necessary and wished amount of people? 

1. MAKE IT EASY: The more you ask your followers to do to enter or participate, the bigger the risk that the engagement won't be as you would hope. If people need to invest time to win something they're more often triggered to click away or drop intrest. Therefor it's important that you set a goal before posting the contest. What is your goals? More followers? More visibility? It's an important question to ask yourself.

To increase your followers amount it's easy to ask them to tag a couple of friends in the picture. An example: 'Interesting in winning this leather bag? Enter by tagging 3friends that would be interested in participating too.' By this action the other friends might start following your account as well.

If you want to increase your visibility you can ask to regram or share the contest picture on their own profile of Insta Stories. However, know that this won't be easy as a picture is something more personal and will be a part of their feed. Not everyone wants this as it's very personal.

Don't ask them too many rules. Give them a simple one or two step task. If you want to avoid spam participants or fake followers, ask them a little more investment.

2. BE CREATIVE: Just as an event or any other promotion, you want it do be done well and create enough buzz around the contest. You can do this in different ways: you can work together with influencers as mentioned before or hosts as we call them. Also enough sharing on Stories can help to keep the buzz going. If you have a photo contest or recipe contest, ask the participants to create a nice picture/flatlay. With those entries you can create new content to promote your own giveaway. A win-win situation! 

One extra tip careful! Participating in too many loop giveaways or others can lead to a shadow ban by Instagram or even deactivation of your account. Do it right and with limits. Just as playing the lottery!