11 Best Instagram Giveaway Ideas (And How to Execute Them)

With over 1 billion monthly active users, Instagram has become the crown jewel of social media marketing. One of the ways you can utilize Instagram and engage with followers is through Instagram giveaways.

Giveaways are a great way to start online conversations about your brand without being overly promotional, as well as increase engagement with your followers.

Before I share some of the best Instagram giveaway ideas, let's take a deeper look at the concept. And the various benefits that you can get by hosting an Instagram giveaway.

What are Instagram Giveaways?

Typically, when you host an Instagram giveaway, you offer freebies to your audience, and ask them to do one or more of the following things:

• Like and/or share your Instagram post
• Use your branded hashtag
• Tag their friends in the comments section
• Follow your Instagram account

You can also make your giveaway more engaging by introducing a competitive element to it.

For instance, you could ask participants to upload a selfie featuring your product. Or participants could be required to take part in a poll in order to be eligible to win.

Let's take a look at one of the Instagram giveaway ideas that was used by Birchbox to promote their new product range.

The New York-based monthly subscription service gave their followers a chance to win an exclusive set of products before its launch . All they needed to do was choose the products they wanted to see in the set.

The post received 2700+ likes and many comments, proving that it was successful at increasing the brand's visibility and engagement on social media .

Depending on your goals, you can explore a wide range of Instagram giveaway ideas. However, before we discuss those, let's delve deeper into the benefits of hosting an Instagram giveaway.

Why Should You Host Instagram Giveaways?

The biggest advantage of Instagram giveaways and Instagram contests is that they allow you to build brand awareness. 

Did you know that Instagram accounts that run regular contests grow 70 times faster than those that don't.

There are people who might be keeping track of your Instagram account without actually hitting the “follow” button.

When you encourage them to hit that button and follow your Instagram account in exchange for certain incentives, you can grow your audience effectively.

Also, if people who tag a friend can get freebies, they are more likely to do so. And people who get tagged on your giveaway post immediately receive a notification.

This, in turn, widens your social media reach by helping your brand connect with a new audience that may have been previously unaware of your existence.

These people might further be motivated to participate in the Instagram giveaway by tagging their friends. Which enhances brand visibility and gets more people talking about your brand.

What more, you ask?

Another major advantage of social media contests and giveaways is that they improve audience engagement.

The study by Tailwind also indicated that Instagram contests get roughly 64X more comments and 3.5X more likes compared to other social media content.

Also, the use of a branded hashtag improves brand visibility by showcasing your brand name and landing page to your audience.

Thus, giveaways and contests can give you a chance to establish a connection with your audience and improve brand recognition across the social media platform.

Giveaways also provide access to a treasure trove of user-generated content. For instance, when you run a selfie contest, you can easily repurpose these contest entries on your own Instagram Story page.

People who win a contest or giveaway and get featured on your page feel valued. This, in turn, reinforces loyalty by encouraging them to become genuine advocates of your brand.

In the long run, Instagram giveaways can also help generate leads for your business. When you reward the winner of a giveaway with free samples of your product, they are immediately drawn to your brand.

If they enjoy using your products, they might even consider purchasing them. They are also likely to recommend your brand to others, thus encouraging more people to purchase your products.

But how can you ensure your Instagram giveaway is a hit?

Here is what you need to do to host a successful Instagram giveaway on your landing page:

How Can You Run Successful Instagram Giveaways?

While giveaways might seem quite simple and straightforward, executing a successful giveaway campaign isn’t easy. 

You need to ensure that your giveaway announcement actually reaches your target audience.

Also, you need to be cautious so that the giveaway doesn’t land you in any kind of legal trouble.

Set Your Goals

There are different types of ideas for Instagram giveaways that you can choose from.

However, your selection will depend on the ultimate objective you want to achieve through your campaign. It will determine the rules and rewards of your giveaway.

Is your goal to see more engagement on your Instagram posts? Do you want to attract more Instagram followers and build brand awareness? Or would you like to generate leads for your business?

Your answers to these questions will determine which of the Instagram giveaway ideas you should use.

Draft a Detailed and Transparent Description

The first step for hosting a giveaway is to announce it on your Instagram profile, and on Instagram Stories.

This requires you to articulate a comprehensive description that outlines the following:

• Mode of entry – Clearly specify what a user must do in order to participate in the giveaway.
• Deadline – Set an end date to create a sense of urgency and encourage more people to participate in the giveaway.
• Eligibility criteria and rules – If you want to attract entries from a particular geographic location or to target a specific age group, make sure you specify that in your announcement.
• Prize – Don’t surround the reward in an air of mystery. Instead, you feature it prominently in your giveaway announcement to attract more submissions. Without a tempting reward, your audience may not feel sufficiently motivated to participate.
• Winner announcement – In addition to the deadline, you should also specify the date and time when you will announce the winner(s) of your giveaways. This keeps your audience glued to your Instagram profile, thus strengthening engagement even further.

You should also ensure that your giveaway announcement abides by Instagram’s promotion guidelines.

As a rule, you should make it clear that Instagram has no direct involvement in the social media marketing campaign. Also, you shouldn’t encourage inaccurate tagging just for the sake of brand building.

For instance, you can ask participants to tag their friends in the comments section and not on the picture used for the giveaway announcement.

Also, ensure that your content, visuals, etc. are engaging enough to grab people’s attention. You can do that by using tried-and-tested social media giveaway templates from VYPER.

It helps you with all aspects of designing and running social media giveaways in an easy, hassle-free manner.

Want to learn from an example?

Take a look at the following description CATPARTY used for one of their Instagram giveaways.

The design studio and enamel pin company celebrated the milestone of gaining 1000 followers by offering Instagram users a chance to get their products for free.

Notice how the rules, rewards, and deadline are clearly specified in the image caption.

It is also worth noting how the brand has used an attractive and quirky image to accompany the giveaway announcement.

Select the Right Reward

Offering an expensive prize that is unrelated to your brand might attract freeloaders who will unfollow you once the giveaway is over. 

Such users are not the ones you want to target, right?

The only way to keep such irrelevant entries at bay is by offering a prize that is related to your brand. It could be in the form of an exclusive gift basket containing your products, loyalty points, or free membership.

To get more ideas on the type of rewards that you can give use VYPER. It does not just help you design viral social media giveaways but also provides tons of reward ideas.

Such rewards give the winners a taste of your products or services. If they like what they win, they might be willing to make a purchase from you.

They can even turn into loyal brand advocates who recommend your products or services to their friends and family. Clearly, this is a great way to drive conversions and increase sales through social media efforts.

You should also ensure that the reward is proportional to the amount of effort required from a participant. A few product samples are enough to encourage people to like your post or follow your page.

However, if you want them to upload pictures with a branded hashtag, you will need a more compelling prize.

Craft Your Own Hashtag

One thing that most popular social media giveaways on Instagram have in common is the use of a unique branded hashtag. In addition to increasing brand visibility, it also simplifies the entry process for participants.

Branded hashtags also make it easy for you to keep track of the entries. 

Make sure your hashtag is simple, concise, and easy to read. It should also showcase your brand name for maximum impact.

Announce the Winner

Make sure you actually announce the winner of your social media giveaway on the stipulated date and time. 

By delivering on your promise, you can create the image of a brand that is transparent and true to your potential customers.

This can help reinforce the credibility and trustworthiness of your brand.

You can make the winners feel more special by highlighting their names and Instagram profiles on your page and on Instagram Stories.

This special gesture can position your brand as one that truly values your audience. It can also help you build an army of brand evangelists.

Once you have announced the winner, make sure you edit any Instagram posts that announced the content and add a line such as “Giveaway Closed.”

Promote Your Giveaway

Merely coming up with a bunch of fancy Instagram giveaway ideas won’t guarantee results.

In fact, even the best Instagram giveaway might fail to achieve the desired social media reach and engagement in the absence of adequate promotion.

So, what do you do?

You need to ensure that your giveaway announcement grabs the attention of your target audience.

In order to solicit maximum participation, you should promote your Instagram giveaway on all social media platforms. 

Use popular hashtags such as #contestalert, #giveaway, etc. in your giveaway description.

This is extremely useful to increase the visibility of your post. You can also use other relevant and trending hashtags in order to maximize reach.

In addition, you can collaborate with a relevant social media influencer to promote your content. Ask them to post your giveaway announcement on their own Instagram page.

This will help you tap into the loyal and engaged fan base of the influencer which, in turn, expands your reach even further.

For instance, HoMedics partnered with mom blogger, Joceline Raad, to announce a giveaway on Instagram.

Her social media post received more than 1000 likes within a day of posting and was flooded with comments from ardent fans of Joceline.

In order to achieve the final objectives of your Instagram giveaways, it is crucial to have a proper promotion plan.

Now, let’s take a look at some of the most popular Instagram giveaway ideas.

Best Instagram Giveaway Ideas

Instagram giveawats can range from something as simple as asking the participants to like a post to encouraging the creation of user-generated content.

It depends on the end goals you want to achieve through the campaign. And it also depends on the budget you have for the reward of the giveaway.

1. Like and Share to Win

One of the simplest Instagram giveaways is to encourage participants to like and share it on their own social media profiles.

You can even ask them to use your unique branded hashtag while reposting the announcement.

By getting your content shared, you will be able to increase brand recognition and attract more people to your Instagram page.

Here’s an example of this kind of giveaway from Gardenscapes, a mobile game.

Users are given the option to earn coins by reposting the announcement with the hashtag #gardenscapecontest. This is an effortless way to reach a new audience without bombarding them with overly promotional content.

2. Follow to Win

Follow to win is an Instagram giveaway competition that has been used since Instagram’s inception. 

To be eligible to win the prize, all a user has to do is follow the brand or influencer’s Instagram account.

Needless to say, this is a great way to grow your follower count and build brand awareness. It is often used in combination with other Instagram giveaways.

Found Wild Project, a photography collective frequently hosts such Instagram giveaways.

For instance, in the example below, users need to follow FWP on Instagram and tag at least three of their friends to enter to win a pair of polarized shades.

Such campaigns have helped the collective garner a loyal community of 31,000+ Instagram followers.

You can grow your audience further by encouraging users to like and follow your profile on other social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

3. Tag a Friend

This is one of the most effective Instagram giveaways to grow your audience.

The concept is fairly self-explanatory – participants need to tag one or more of their friends in the comments section to be eligible to win the prize.

The users who have been tagged can further tag their friends to participate in the giveaway. This is an effective way of expanding your reach in a fast yet subtle manner.

When people get tagged in your post, they will take notice of your giveaway announcement and your Instagram page.

This enables you to reach an audience that may not have been accessed via other modes of communication. That is why tag-a-friend is one of the most popular Instagram giveaway ideas.

Atlanta Bucket List (ATL Bucket List), one of Atlanta’s most popular food-based Instagram accounts, often collaborates with restaurants and brands to announce such giveaways.

In this particular example, they have partnered with Honeysuckle Gelato to give away free servings of their desserts.

The first rule of the giveaways asks participants to follow both ATL Bucket List and Honeysuckle Gelato on Instagram. This helps both brands grow their audiences in an effective and speedy manner.

A slight variation of the tag-a-friend giveaway is to ask participants to nominate their friends for a prize.

Instead of winning the prize for themselves, participants can indirectly reward their friends with your freebies. This strategy offers the same benefits as other Instagram giveaway ideas.

4. Photo Contest

This is one of the most popular and prevalent Instagram giveaway ideas.

Your audience uploads content (pictures, selfies, and videos) on Instagram regularly. You can incentivize this behavior for your own benefit by encouraging them to upload a picture showcasing your product/brand.

You should also encourage the use of your branded hashtag in order to ensure maximum brand visibility.

When participants upload pictures with your branded hashtag on their Instagram profiles, their network of Instagram followers and friends becomes aware of your brand.

With the right incentive, you can even encourage some people from this extended network to take part in the giveaway.

In addition to presenting them with material rewards, you can also give them a chance to get featured on your Instagram page.

For instance, take a look at the photo contest announced by etxtraveler on Instagram.

On the post, the categories for eligible photos are given with cash and prizes on offer for the best photos.

5. “Caption This” Contest

One of the most common and simplest Instagram giveaway ideas is to post a picture without a proper caption. The trick is to encourage users to post their own captions in the comments section.

The winner, in turn, is rewarded with freebies. In addition, you can also edit the posts to showcase the winning caption.

In this post, the Westminster kennel club asked their followers to caption this picture. The winner was the caption with the most likes.

6. Scheduled Giveaways

One way to create buzz about your Instagram giveaways is to announce them at regular intervals. For instance, you could start a weekly or monthly giveaway series.

This gives your audience something to look forward to. Such anticipation is extremely beneficial for boosting engagement and reinforcing loyalty through your Instagram giveaway ideas.

You can create and run all these kinds of social media giveaways and promotions using VYPER. It has templates for different types of campaigns and is your one-stop tool to run such end-to-end campaigns.

7. User-Generated Content

User-generated content giveaways are a fun way to engage with your followers, as well as create a community that interacts with each other.

It’s a fairly simple process. Announce the contest on your Instagram account with the rules and prizes on the line.

There is plenty of different user-generated content, whether it be photography, design, music, videos, or writing.

In this post, followers are asked to remix a song and post the link to their remix in the comment section. The best remix will win music production software. 

Not only is this a great way to get your brand recognition and promote a new song, but it makes your audience feel involved in the process.

8. Hashtag Contest

Hashtags are used by Instagram and its algorithm to find related content, which makes it a great tool to help get more users to pay attention to your Instagram giveaway.

Hashtag contests are when you ask your users to post something specific with the contest hashtag attached to the post.

If all goes well, you should start seeing a decent amount of traffic directed towards your contest hashtag, especially if it's trending.

Electronically Made hosts a weekly competition with the hashtag #eclecticallymade. Users need to take a photo of a room they’ve decorated and add the hashtag to the post.

9. Collaborate With Other Influencers and Brands

Collaborating with other brands and businesses to create a giveaway contest is a great way to share the costs of the prize, and also promote your brand to more people through another brand.

This is especially great if your business is smaller and needs some exposure. 

Working with a larger company that has a greater following than you allows your brand to gain some extra traffic from them and even increase lead generation and conversion rates.

Another way to look at it is user interest. If you’ve tried a few different giveaway ideas without much success, it might be that your followers weren’t interested. 

Collaborating with a brand or business that your followers might show interest in could lead to more engagement.

This joint giveaway by Kiehl’s and Blendjet involved the ever-effective like and tag a friend to win.

10. Instagram Story Giveaways

According to Instagram, 91% of active users watch video content on Instagram weekly. Instagram Stories are a great way to engage with your users in a different format. 

A giveaway on Instagram Stories might be able to entice users that normally would not have participated in a normal giveaway posted on your timeline.

You can use Instagram Stories with an embedded link to a competition, or have the rules on the Story.

You can also use Instagram Stories to remind your followers of current giveaway campaigns, as well as an embedded link to the original post with the clickable link sticker.

11. Trivia

Another great way to engage with your followers and make Instagram giveaways more engaging is Trivia.

All the problem solvers and riddle masters will love trying to answer trivia to get a prize. Usually, you’ll ask followers to comment below the post with what they think the correct answer is.

Correct answers will be put into a draw and a winner will be announced at a set date.

This post has four pictures, a post with the rules and three pictures each with a question on it. Users need to post their answers in the comment section, tag a friend, and share the competition with others to enter.

5 Best Instagram Giveaway Tools

If running an Instagram giveaway seems like a daunting task to you, don’t worry.

There are plenty of tools to help you automate parts of your contest, enabling you to run as many contests as you want without having to worry about digging through hundreds of comments or manage campaigns by yourself.

1. VYPER

VYPER is an all-in-one tool to create and manage all your giveaways, including Instagram giveaways.

VYPER has a range of templates for all different sorts of giveaways making it easy to quickly create a new Instagram giveaway.

Below, you’ll find the template for a viral contest giveaway. It’s easy to edit the template, although customization isn’t as flexible as some other tools.

With that in mind, VYPER does offer one of the easiest-to-use Instagram giveaway tools. It even allows you to edit the giveaway to function and look correctly on mobile by simply clicking the bottom right icon.

2. Woorise

Woorise is an excellent tool that helps you create giveaways, landing pages, quizzes, and surveys.

Woorise has an intuitive design that lets you create your landing page using a drag-and-drop builder, making it easier to create the landing page you desire without resorting to a template.

If you do decide to use a template, Woorise offers a template for most situations. For example, here is the template you start with and the controls to customize an Instagra giveaway.

The best part is that Woorise does come with a free version, although it has limited capability. They also include a 14-day free trail for their paid packages.

3. Iconosquare

Iconosqaure is an intuitive social media manager and planner that has built-in functions related to Instagram giveaways.

Its able to manage multiple social media profiles, provide analysis of your accounts, posts, and giveaways and, most importantly, schedule posts and giveaways.

For giveaways that need you to pick a comment as the winner, they also offer a free comment picker on their site.

Simply choose your brand’s account, select which post you want the comments from, edit the options and filters, and you’re done. It will then display the winning comment.

4. Wask

Wask is a super simple Instagram comment picker. It’s simple to use and gets straight to the point.

Simply add the URL from the post on your Instagram, click how many times you need the person to have posted, and you’re all set.

5. AI Grow

AI Grow is another Instagram comment picker on the surface, but it has some extra features that make it better than most.

The dashboard is simple and easy to navigate. You can link your Instagram account on the main dashboard and get analytics there as well.

After you’ve linked your Instagram account, creating a campaign and picking a winner is two clicks away. 

If you’re looking for a dedicated Instagram giveaway managing tool, with social media tools packed in as well, then AI Grow is an excellent choice.

FAQs

Which of These Instagram Giveaway Ideas Will You Try First?

A variety of Instagram giveaway ideas are gaining immense popularity among brands and digital marketers. They are great tools for reaching new audiences and engaging with them.

In addition, long-term giveaways help you generate leads and drive conversions. This is crucial for building an army of loyal brand advocates.

Regardless of the Instagram giveaway ideas that you choose, make sure to promote the campaign on different platforms.

Have you successfully implemented any Instagram giveaway ideas? Please share your experience and views in the comments section below.