How to Do Giveaways on Instagram

Gifting is a fun thing that we do for many reasons - to celebrate holidays; show appreciation to friends, family, or businesses; mark a special occasion; or bribe your boss (uhh… just ignore that last one.) But who knew that gifting can also be an excellent tool for increasing engagement, follower growth, and brand awareness on Instagram?

On Insta, gifting takes the form of giveaways, which are a near-flawless way to hype up your current follower base and draw fresh eyes to your Instagram account. Who doesn’t enjoy a set of free stickers, a cool branded logo T-shirt, or a sample of a brand new product?

Content creators, streamers, small business owners, influencers, entrepreneurs - all of these can benefit from giveaways as a tool to hype up your IG account and ramp up follower growth. Giveaways have a conversion rate of over 30% according to stats (via BusinessDasher) - which means that over 30% of new customers are acquired through giveaways. That’s a stat you can’t ignore! 

Let’s Do the Thing!

Over 500 million of Instagram’s users check out the site daily (via SocialPilot), so learning how to run an Instagram giveaway is most definitely in your best interest.  

The smartest place to start is to set down some ground rules for your Instagram giveaway, to keep it fair for your audience and compliant with Instagram’s policies on sponsored, endorsed, or otherwise administered content. We’ll walk you through the process from there:

1. Define What’s Happening

So what’s this giveaway thing all about? Start by figuring out what the point of your giveaway is: are you primarily looking to gain more followers, promote a specific product or event, attempt to go viral, or simply thank your existing followers/fan base? 

Having a focus for your giveaway, a theme for it, and a catchy title will help drum up more interest. This works especially well if your giveaway is topical (holiday giveaways, giveaways tied in to a big, well-known event like Comic-Con) or capitalizes on a current trend. Having a theme will also make your giveaway Instagram posts look great!

2. Choose Hype-Worthy Prizes

Okay, let’s get real here. As we mentioned above, everyone likes free stuff. But the amount of effort people are willing to go through to get said free stuff is directly to proportional to how cool the free stuff is. So while it might be tempting to “garage sale” your giveaway with some products or services you don’t want in your inventory or roster anymore, it’s better to take a careful look at what you’re offering. 

Would you be excited to win it? What’s the monetary value of your prizes? And what are you expecting entrants to do to get a shot at winning? Find a good balance between the quality of the prize and the quest to get it, and you’ll be golden.

3. How Will They Enter?

When running a giveaway, clear entry requirements and promotional guidelines are important from the start, so there’s no confusion about how to win. Whichever method you choose (see our Instagram Giveaway Ideas below!), offer a short, concise explanation for how to enter, plus a shortlist of giveaway rules. Also make sure to set start and end dates for your giveaway, which both helps keep the number of entries in check, and also creates a sense of urgency around your giveaway and its prizes.

4. Post N’ Promote!

Obviously you’ll be posting and using Instagram Stories to promote your giveaway! So let’s check out some best practices for that. Taking your theme that we discussed above, make a few splashy graphics with nice, clear photos of the prizes (you’ll want to post more than once to build that hype!) and post them. It also helps to outline the entry requirements right on your post - the less barriers to entry, the better, as everyone wants a chance to win! 

Including your giveaway entry requirements directly on your post will make it easier for people to participate, getting you more entrants and more hype!

Share your giveaway graphics on your other socials; if you live stream, chat up your upcoming giveaway and share links in your chat to increase engagement; and if you have an IRL event or shop, make sure to print out your graphics and promote your giveaway there, too!

How to Pick a Winner for Your Instagram Giveaway

There are basically two main methods you can use to choose the winner(s) of your Instagram giveaways. 

The merit based method means that the entrants have to do or contribute something to win the prize. Some examples of this would be having them put together an outfit wearing one of your clothing items; post a photo of a coffee drink in one of your custom mugs; or submit a design to be included in your line of T-shirts. The judging here is clearly subjective, as you’ll pick the entry you like the most.

The random selection method lets you use a random comment picker tool to choose a winner from among the comments on your Instagram giveaway post. Platforms like Wask’s Comment Picker work great for this (you just input a link to your Instagram post.) If you have a more modest comments section, you can copy/paste all of the usernames and put them into a tool like Random Name Picker.

 Instagram Giveaway Ideas!

• Tag A Friend - This one’s pretty simple: it just requires entrants to comment on your post and tag one or more friends in the comments section. This increases engagement in the comments section, draws new people to your Instagram page, and ramps up your visibility. The giveaway winner can just be a randomly selected participant.

• Like to Win - Also simple: entrants need to follow your Instagram account, and like your giveaway post to enter. It’s probably best to randomly select a winner for this one.

• Comment - Requires entrants to comment on your post in a specific way; for instance, “Tell us your favorite shoe from our Fall collection.” This would most likely be a randomized winner, too.

• UGC (User Generated Content) - This IG contest requires followers to post photos wearing or using your product, and then tagging themselves and your brand/business. You can select winners at random, or approach your giveaway from more of a judging angle (“Best Use of Product,” “Best Outfit Including Product,” etc.)

• Repost and Tag - This requires entrants to repost your giveaway graphic on their own account, tagging your brand/business, and, again, a randomized winner would work best.

Ready to try an Instagram giveaway and find your winners? Take our guide above and tailor it to fit your brand or business - and before you know it, the real big winner will be you!