With roughly 1 BILLION monthly active users, it makes sense that you want to bring more followers to your brand. But how do you do that? Many brands partner with Influencers to host giveaways to build their brand presence.

Simply put, an Instagram giveaway allows you to offer something for free in exchange for an like, comment, or other requirement as decided by the brand. When done properly, a giveaway can help you establish your brand on Instagram, build a following, and share your products or services with a larger audience than you can organically.

Instagram Giveaway Best Practices

1. Choose the prize for your giveaway

The first thing you want to do is decide on the product, service, or experience you want to giveaway to your audience. This will vary depending on your end goal. If you want to spread awareness around a new product launch, you'll likely want to giveaway that specific product as your prize.

2. Decide on a goal for your giveaway

By determining your goal, you're able to tailor your strategy more specifically and keep track of whether or not your giveaway was successful. Goals may be more followers, increased engagement, or more website traffic.

3. Determine the entry-criteria for your giveaway

Your entry-criteria depends on your ultimate goal. If you simply want to spread brand awareness, you might ask each participant to like your post and comment with the name of a friend -- this allows you to increase your reach quickly, and could result in new followers. If you've partnered with a brand and, in exchange for one of their products as a prize, they've asked you to include a request to follow their brand as part of your entry-criteria.

If you want to drive traffic to a specific link or site, you would include a link to specific product for entries.

4. Select a hashtag for giveaway

On Instagram, hashtags increase your visibility. You will want to create a compelling and unique hashtag to help spread awareness of your giveaway. For instance, along with #giveaway, you might include #winitwednesday #[yourbrand]giveaway #[yourbrand]contest, or something of similar nature.

5. Launch and promote your Instagram contest.

Once you've chosen your prize, entry-criteria, potential partners, hashtag, time-limit, and goal, you're finally ready to launch and promote your post! Be sure to launch your giveaway during your highest engaged times on Instagram. This will ensure the most eyes see it when it launches.

Be sure to cross promote your giveaway as well on other social channels including, facebook & twitter. This will help create a funnel to your giveaway.

Instagram Giveaway Ideas

Here's a list of some of the more common giveaway ideas:

1. Like This Post : Ask followers like your post for a chance to win a free product or service.

2. Tag A Friend: Ask followers tag one of their friends in the comments section for a chance to win.

3. Like And Share: Ask followers to like your giveaway and repost it on their own channels for the chance to greatly expand your brand's reach.

4. Follow Us: Ask followers to follow your brand, or a partner (or both) for the chance to win.

5. Caption this: Some brands post images and leave the caption section blank with a "Caption this for a chance to win".

Instagram Giveaway Rules

Instagram's rules are relatively simple when it comes to giveaways. First and foremost, it's critical you include a statement like the following, so viewers know your promotion is not related to Instagram:

"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."

You will want to make sure you don't ask participants to tag themselves in your content, or tag something that isn't in the photo -- Instagram will penalize you for this. Take a look at Instagram's promotion guidelines for a full list of rules and regulations.

What Not To Do

We went over what to do for a successful campaign, but there are also things that will cause Instagram to throw red flags and not give your campaign the attention it deserves in their algorithm. Here are 2 things NOT TO DO during your Instagram giveaway.

DON’T encourage spamming

The Instagram algorithm doesn’t like spam, and rightly so. And that’s probably our most concrete reason for why your giveaways shouldn’t promote spamming. What do you think is more important, 50 comments from one user or 10 comments from 10 different people? We would definitely go for the second one! The popular “1 comment = 1 entry, comment more for more entries” requirement is against Instagram giveaway rules as it encourages spamming. Not sure if you trust us on this one? Instagram community guidelines ask to “foster meaningful and genuine interactions”.

DON’T forget to announce the winners

Users participate in giveaways for a chance to win – make sure you offer only positive experiences by announcing the lucky winners of your promotion. If you don’t officially share the winners of your giveaway, you might lose credibility and trust as some users may simply think that the giveaway was a fraud.

There are different ways to announce Instagram giveaway winners:

• Edit the giveaway post and add “Giveaway closed, the winners have been contacted”. But you can reinforce trust further by tagging the lucky winners in the post.

• Create a new post only to announce the winner

• Share the winners in Stories and create a Highlight so that it doesn’t disappear after 24 hours

Do you have any tips for a successful Instagram giveaway? We would love to hear them in the comments.

Are you looking for a way to incorporate influencers into your digital campaign and marketing strategies? Contact us