Exploring the Benefits of Hosting Instagram Contests
Contests are common on social media, and you’ve likely seen many of them in your own social media feeds. So many businesses use contests because they know how valuable they are.
Instagram has some of the highest levels of engagement of any social media platform. And running contests or promotions on the platform can drastically increase that engagement for your business. Instagram contests typically require entrants to both like and comment on a photo, thereby increasing engagement on the post.
This increased engagement benefits you: When your followers interact with more of your content, your posts appear higher in their feeds due to the Instagram algorithm.
Instagram employs an algorithm that sorts through all content created by each person that a user follows. This content is then re-sorted in the user’s feed, with the content the user is most likely to engage with near the top of the user's feed. Multiple components affect the algorithm, including how often a user interacts with an account’s content, the type of content the user typically interacts with, the time the user spends on Instagram, and a piece's popularity with other users.
We talk more about contest entry requirements later in this chapter. Here, we describe ways that different requirements can benefit your business.
Contests on Instagram often require entrants to follow the account, which increases your followers. In addition, some contests require participants to take a photo and upload it to their account. Each participant sharing content about the company provides reach to new audiences. The company also gets access to a variety of user-generated content that it can repurpose. (For more on user-generated content, see Chapter 8.)
Finally, Instagram contests are simple to implement and administer. This allows you to get many positive results without an overwhelming commitment or cost, increasing your return on investment.
Following the Rules and Restrictions for Running Contests
When running a contest, you need to be aware of several federal and state rules and regulations, far beyond Instagram's requirements. We recommend that you investigate local and national regulations regarding contests, giveaways, promotions, and lotteries before running any contest on social media.
For example, in California, contest and sweepstake laws are defined in CA Bus & Prof Code § 17539. An Internet search for your state's contest or sweepstake laws will help you find the proper rules and regulations. In the US, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulates disclosure of endorsements (www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/ftcs-endorsement-guides-what-people-are-asking) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulates the broadcasting of contests (www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/broadcasting-contests-lotteries-and-solicitation-funds and www.fcc.gov/general/broadcast-contests).
While these laws and regulations will give you good guidance, they may be updated or revised at any time. It is always in your best interest to review legal counsel for the most accurate legal advice related to running contests.
Each social media platform has its own rules and restrictions for running contests, and Instagram is no exception. Here, we outline the specific details you need to be aware of for Instagram contests.
Although these rules apply at the time this book was published, they can evolve at any point. Read about the current regulations for Instagram contests and promotions at https://help.instagram.com/179379842258600.
Listing the official contest rules
Instagram requires that you include the official contest rules in your contest post. These official rules of entry typically include the requirements to enter, the date and time (include the timezone) the contest ends, how winners will be chosen and notified, and any restrictions for entry.
You can simply list these rules of entry directly in your post caption on Instagram. Figure 13-1 is an example of how to format your contest caption to include this information.
If you have more detailed contest rules and terms of entry, or legal disclaimers for your entry requirements, you can include a reference to a website link or a notification to click the link in your profile for full contest rules. Figure 13-2 provides an example of what these more detailed rules and terms of entry might look like.
Releasing Instagram of any involvement
Instagram requires that you include a short paragraph in each contest post that relieves it of any involvement or participation in the contest.
Here is a sample of the verbiage to include, which you can change as needed: “Per Instagram rules, this promotion is in no way sponsored, administered, or associated with Instagram, Inc. By entering, entrants confirm that they are 13+ years of age, release Instagram of responsibility, and agree to Instagram’s terms of use.”
Planning a Successful Contest
No one wants to put time and energy into something that falls flat on its face or doesn’t drive results.
A successful contest on Instagram has the following 11 key components:
- State your contest goals.
- Choose a prize.
- Establish entry requirements.
- Define rules or conditions.
- Determine the contest's length.
- Figure out the promotion schedule.
- Choose a hashtag.
- Design the contest's images.
- Craft post captions.
- Decide how winners will be chosen and notified.
- Outline who will respond to contest engagement.
We cover them all in this section so that you'll have the information you need to run a rewarding contest.
Stating your contest goals
Your Instagram contest needs to be designed to serve your business in some way. To successfully execute a contest, you first need to know what you want as a result from the contest.
Businesses typically run a contest for one or more of the following reasons:
- Increase engagement on their posts
- Add followers to their Instagram account
- Increase visits to their website as well as opt-ins or signups for something
- Gain user-generated content that they can repurpose
It's best to choose one key goal for a single contest, but some companies choose several. For example, more followers might be their primary goal, with increasing engagement as a secondary goal.
After you know why you’re running your contest, you're ready to move on with planning.
Choosing a prize
To get people to participate, you have to provide something of value that they would like to win. Prizes can range from low value to extremely high value, depending on your resources and goals.
Your prize should always be related to your business! Giving away an iPad or other generic prize doesn't attract your ideal audience and creates unnecessary interest in your contest. Instead, choose one or your own products or services that would appeal to your target audience.
Your prize should be commensurate with the level of participation to enter. For example, if the prize is valued at $10, a simple “like a photo” contest is appropriate. By comparison, asking people to take a photo, post it to their account, and use your hashtag to promote you requires a considerable amount of work and effort, so the prize should be significantly more valuable.
You also need to decide how many winners will be awarded. Will more than one person win the same prize? Or will one winner get the grand prize and one or more additional winners receive a smaller prize? If you want to offer different levels of prizes, you need to determine what they are.
Establishing entry requirements
To be entered into the contest, participants have to do something. Some of the most common entry requirements follow:
- Following your account
- Liking the photo you posted
- Mentioning one or more people in the comments
- Posting a photo with a specific hashtag
- Filling out a form on your website
You may even choose to have them complete two or three of these requirements as a full entry into the contest. Figure 13-3 shows one contest that requires multiple components to enter.
It’s best to limit the number of criteria for entry to two or three steps. The more complicated you make the entry process, the fewer participants.
Defining the rules or conditions
We mentioned Instagram's contest rules, as well as the need to follow any local, state, and federal regulations. You also need to determine your own rules for entry.
Add any criteria related to age restrictions, geographical restrictions, content to be shared in photographs, and limits to quantities awarded in the contest.
Determining the contest's length
You have many things to consider when determining the length of your contest. The first factor is how many days or weeks the contest will run. Typically, for the best performance, contests that are longer than 3 days and less than 2 weeks are best.
For contests that require entrants to post a photo or create content, it’s best to let the contest run longer in order to give them time to create and upload their entries.
Knowing your contest duration, you then need to determine the exact day and time the contest will both begin and end so that you can include this in your contest details and your planning calendar.
Figuring out the promotion schedule
Now that you know how long the contest will run and when it will start and end, you need to determine how often you will promote the contest on Instagram.
You always want to promote the contest on the first day and then again on the last day to remind people to enter before time runs out. Depending on the length of the contest, however, you might want to promote the contest also one or more times throughout to keep momentum and to reach more people.
Choosing a hashtag
It's advantageous to use a unique hashtag for each contest because it helps you track the contest on Instagram and allows your audience to easily participate.
When every participant uses the same hashtag to identify his or her post or entry, you can view the submissions in the hashtag search gallery on Instagram or by using a third-party tool such as Tagboard (http://tagboard.com).
Having a unique hashtag for each contest also allows you to monitor participation in each contest and compare those contests to determine which ones perform best or drive the best engagement.
Choosing the right hashtag may take a little time. When selecting your contest hashtag, consider the following:
- The hashtag should be unique to the individual contest.
- The hashtag should be related to your brand or the specific topic of the contest or both.
- The hashtag can be longer than usual to add distinguishing context.
Figure 13-4 shows three examples of unique hashtags that different accounts utilized in their contests. You can see how each one used a hashtag related to the contest theme.
Include your contest hashtag as a text overlay on the images promoting the contest. Doing so will make the post image stand out on Instagram and build awareness of the contest.
Designing contest images
To promote your contest on Instagram in accordance with the schedule you determined in the previous steps, you need to create at least one image to post as the contest notification. You can create more than one image to keep the momentum going and content fresh in the Instagram feed.
The images should be related to the contest's theme. For example, if you're creating a back-to-school contest, your post image might be school supplies or an apple on a teacher’s desk. The images should set the tone for the theme and the purpose of the contest, as shown in Figure 13-5.
One of the images may also include an example or preview of the prize. For example, if the prize is a box of your products, a well-staged photo of the box and its components will get your audience excited for what they could win and help encourage them to participate.
You can also include a text box or text details on your image to highlight the contest or provide contest details. In Figure 13-4, the @Petco contest post includes details about the dates, the prize, and the contest hashtag.
Crafting post captions for the contest
Your post caption should let people know you are running a contest and also get them excited about the contest and encourage them to participate. Write a post caption for each post of the contest in advance. This enables you to share a cohesive message throughout the contest and ensures that you don’t omit necessary or important information.
If you plan to run contests frequently, draft a caption template for contest posts and save it on your mobile device. This way, you can open it each time you plan to run a contest, and update the information for the current contest details.
Your caption should include the following:
- A statement that you are running a contest
- Prize details
- Your contest entry requirements
- Legal disclosures
We talk about the legal disclosure requirements previously in this chapter. You want to include all those details in your post captions.
Refer to Figures 13-1 and 13-3 for great examples of incorporating all these details into a contest caption.
Deciding how winners will be chosen and notified
How you will determine winners depends on how the contest was structured and how the entries were submitted. The two most common ways to choose a winner are using judges and through random selection.
If your plan is to have someone judge the entries to determine a winner, you need to clearly state the winning criteria. For example, if you require entrants to submit photos of their pets with your product, two obvious criteria are that the photo must include both a pet and your product. Additional criteria may include creativity, unique animals, or content that is most closely aligned with your brand theme and styling.
After you decide how the winners will be chosen, outline how you will notify them. It's best to notify the winners directly and privately first. You can do this by sending them a direct message on Instagram (see Chapter 6 for details on direct messaging). Or if they submitted entries by including an email address, you can email their notification. You might also post a comment on their original post on their Instagram account, if that’s an option.
After you notify the winners privately, you might want to post something on your Instagram account, announcing the winners of the contest. This step isn’t necessary and many brands do not do this. For smaller brands, however, the transparency of announcing winners can build trust with your audience that you are actually awarding prizes to real people.
Outlining who will respond to contest engagement
If you're the only one managing your Instagram account, all contest management will fall on you. If you have more than one person on your team, though, clearly outline who is responsible for reviewing and responding to contest engagement.
Throughout the contest, people will request clarification about entry requirements, ask about the prize, or otherwise want more information on the contest. Someone on your team must be able to respond to these questions quickly and accurately.
You also need someone to monitor the entrants and ensure that they are valid entries. Depending on the entrant requirements you established, this task might include the following:
- Monitoring your post for comments and usernames listed in the comments
- Monitoring the contest hashtag for post entries made on participants’ accounts
- Verifying that each entrant is, in fact, following your account
Monitoring and validating are time-consuming. Be sure to factor in enough time to review entrants before announcing a winner.
Executing a Winning Contest
Now that you have everything in place to run the contest successfully, it’s time to execute it.
If you've completed all the prepatory steps outlined in this chapter, the contest execution will be fairly smooth. However, things can always pop up or go unexpectedly, so be prepared to be flexible throughout the contest period.
The first thing to do is to post your first contest announcement image and caption, based on the timeline you established for the contest. After that post goes up on Instagram, actively cross-promote the contest to your audience. Share the contest image to other social media sites for your business and encourage those followers to join you on Instagram to enter the contest. Send an email to your email list, informing the recipients about the contest and asking them to submit their entry on Instagram. If you have a physical business location, encourage your customers who come in to participate as well.
As the contest gets going, ensure that you are monitoring and readily responding to comments and questions.
In accordance with the contest time frame you established, post subsequent contest posts and reminders to your Instagram account throughout the duration of the contest. Post your final contest post on the last day of the contest and get ready to wrap it up!
Following Up
After the contest has reached the end date and time, you need to close out the contest, announce the winners, and review the entire contest.
After the contest is officially closed, go back to your contest posts on Instagram and edit the caption to add “Contest Closed” or a similar statement at the top of the caption. This ensures that anyone reading your post after the contest entry period understands that the contest is over and won’t attempt to participate.
Now that you have all your entrants, you need to select a winner. Whether you're selecting a randomly generated winner or having the entries judged, choose your individual winner, multiple winner, or winners for different prize levels.
Next, you have to notify the winners. Follow the plan you put in place to notify them directly first. Then make a public post on your profile, if you choose to do so, announcing the winners.
If you must deliver prizes to the winners, coordinate the delivery with them. Do so through private messaging or email communications.
If you're shipping winners a physical package, send them the tracking number of the package so that they can confirm when it will arrive.
After the contest is completed, review your contest analytics. Some of the information to review and measure follows:
- Number of new followers on your Instagram account
- Number of people who participated
- Number of likes and comments on your contest posts
- Amount of traffic generated to your website during the contest period
- Number of conversions through opt-ins or sales during the contest or as a result of the contest
To determine what contest strategies and tactics performed best for you and your business, compare the results from multiple contests. Each time you run a contest, track the analytics just mentioned and compare them to previous contests.
See if the following factors contributed to an increase in participation or conversions:
- Duration of the contest
- Number of posts promoting the contest
- Prize
- Types of images promoting the contest
Contests on Instagram can provide big benefits when executed properly. Remember, though, that time and repeated contests are necessary to deliver significant results. This is why it helps to plan and to track each contest.
Understanding the benefits of contests on Instagram
