What's The Best Way To Run A Contest On Instagram?

If you follow our Instagram @totalmerchandise, you’ll see that we’ve run a few competitions over our time, from Flash Giveaways to full on competitions! Hint: check our Instagram page over the next few days…

We want to put together a full guide to help you organise a competition or content for your business on Instagram. Firstly, you need to understand why social media competitions are great for your business. They’re quick and easy to run, they build excitement, and they can help you reach and engage new fans. Let’s jump straight into the TM guide to running an Instagram competition.

Step 1: Decide on the Prize

The amount of effort your followers will put in is often dependent on the prize. For instance, if you are simply asking them to like, share, or comment (aka something that is easy and simple to do and takes little effort) then it is fine to offer a smaller prize. If your prize is of larger value, your followers will be more willing to create their own content e.g. taking a picture and posting it or answering specific questions in the caption. The prize is essentially a large determinant in followers choosing whether or not they want to enter.

There are a few ways you can go about choosing your prize. You could choose something that suits everyone; for instance, a voucher for a popular brand. Whilst not directly linked to your brand, this creates an immediate buzz and will encourage a lot of people to enter. If applicable to your business, you could offer a voucher for your own brand – this will help to drive sales directly to your business, however, it may not be desired by as many people as a generic voucher would be. This is a decision that you will need to weigh up in your head. Would you prefer to maximise the number of people entering your competition, or would you prefer that everyone who enters your competition is genuinely interested in your business and would like to purchase something from you?

Instead of a voucher, you could also put together a package of prizes. We have done a lot of Flash Giveaways, where we give away a bundle of our Total Merchandise branded merchandise, such as pens, frisbee’s, advent calendars, stress balls and beach balls. These are always popular as they are related directly to your brand and offer participants a wide range of prizes!

Later this week we’ll go into further details on how to run a competition on Instagram. In the meantime, head to @totalmerchandise to see if we have any coming up…