When you set out to start an Instagram account and create an Instagram page for your business, you may well find yourself at a loss for how you can quickly gain followers for your brand. Sure, you can encourage your fans on other social sites like Facebook and Twitter to follow your business on Instagram, but you also want to find a way to get some new blood in the mix. After all, the reason you are starting an Instagram account at all is that you want to widen your reach and increase the number of people who are engaging with your business. With that in mind, you need to be looking for ways to utilize the features and charms of Instagram to connect with people in new ways. Often, the best way to gain attention and build a following after you create an Instagram page for your business is to set up an Instagram contest.

If your business has been in operation for long enough, there’s little doubt that you already realize how giveaways and contests can get customers excited and bring in new people like almost everything else. Quite simply, your consumers like free stuff and they like games and competitions. A contest combines both, and is therefore a pitch perfect marketing tool.

 

In order to hold an Instagram contest, you need to create an Instagram page specifically for the contest. Just as you probably followed a specific set of instructions when starting an Instagram account for your business, you will want to follow a basic roadmap when setting up an Instagram contest. Follow the Instagram contest ideas tips listed below.

 

Decide what to give away:

Any contest is only as good as its top prize, so choose a giveaway item that is going to get people excited. The more exciting your giveaway item is, the more likely people will be to enter the contest and follow your page. Greater numbers of contest participants in turn increase the likelihood of your contest gaining much viral attention. The standard giveaway item is a gift card, as it encourages near-universal interest. If you offer a specific product, you will still get plenty of contest entrants, but only from the niche audience interested in that one product. With a gift card, you widen your niche considerably to include all of the products and services your business offers.

 

Pick the Instagram contest type:

Instagram contests exist in a variety of different forms, and some forms work better for business social media marketing than others.

1. For instance, you might simply ask followers to “Like” one of your Instagram photos in order to enter the contest. This form of contest is great for driving followers and potential followers to your Instagram page and for building up the number of likes on your photos. However, as a form of business social media marketing, “Like” contests fall short because they demand only the lowest level of engagement from participants.
2. Similarly to “Like”-based contests, a re-gram contest will ask your followers to enter their names for a giveaway by simply sharing (or “re-gramming”) one of your photos. Most re-gram contests will instruct entrants to caption the reposted photo with a message like “I am entering a contest to win [insert prize here] from @[insert your company’s Instagram handle here].” Re-gram contests are great for spreading the word about your contest and can also be an efficient means of getting the word out about your brand and about what products or services you have to offer.
3. Most types of Instagram contests will utilize hashtags as a means of organizing contest entries. Think of a hashtag for your contest, taking care to make it unique to your brand, your product and/or service, and the contest you are holding. (An example of a good Instagram hashtag might be #CompanybrandnameGiftCardGiveaway2014, with your brand being inserted into the hashtag.) A simple hashtag Instagram contest can simply require entrants to use the hashtag in a post. You can then monitor everyone who has entered the contest from a unique hashtag page.
4. A slightly more effective contest method allows fellow Instagramers to enter your contest by following your page. If your primary goal is to build up followers for your business Instagram page, then this contest method is perfect. It’s also fairly low-engagement as far as contests go, but it will connect a slew of new people to your business – a phenomenon you might potentially be able to convert into revenue with later sales and promotions.
5. Want a more goal-oriented Instagram contest based on the page following concept listed above? Try a “1,000th follower” contest, where you choose a pre-determined goal of how many followers you want to have, and then offer a giveaway to whoever ends up being your 100th, 1,000th, or 10,000th follower. Contests like this will push people to follow your page, and while you might deal with people coming and going in an attempt to end up as the milestone follower, there’s no doubt that contests like this generate a bunch of interest. Apple does something similar every time it approaches a milestone iTunes download, and the same concept can be employed to great effect on Instagram.
6. Probably the favorite method of Instagram contest invites users to enter the contest by submitting an Instagram photo. You can ask users to follow a theme for their photos, or you can simply ask them to submit the best Instagram photo they can muster, usually by using a hashtag to connect with your brand and contest pages. From there, you can set up a voting system to allow users to pick the winner. This contest method encourages the highest level of engagement and will therefore be the most likely method to net your business a number of lifelong followers and customers.

 

Sell your contest:

Once you’ve picked the perfect Instagram contest for your business social media marketing purposes, make sure you promote the contest. From letting your current customers know about the contest via email or social media to promoting it on contest message boards, marketing your contest will ensure that it reaches the widest number of people and gains the maximum level of response.