Using Instagram Contests As A Useful Social Media Marketing Tool

Successful digital marketers know how the social media platforms can create an influence in personal marketing. Among many strategies used for it, contests always have a significant advantage in terms of engaging the consumers, entertaining them, and building loyalty. Here, in this article, we will try to have an overview of how to run Instagram contests successfully. Before getting into it, let’s have a look at the advantages of running contests as a digital marketing strategy.

• Contests help to build fan base

Many studies have shown that engaging contests helped many brands to increase the fan followers from 50 to 15000 in a matter of days. The primary contests with a more natural entry barrier are proven out to be the best mode to start with.

• Engage effectively

Rather than merely increasing the number of followers, contests also help to deepen a brand’s connection with the fan base. It is seen that UGC (user-generated content) promotion contests, which allows each participant to enjoy a hall of fame can have a significant impact.

• Drive in data

With the urge to win, many of the participants are willing to share their contact info for entry. However, don’t be greedy at this point. What you ask for should commensurate well with what you can offer.

• Word of mouth publicity

With a successful contest, you can have hundreds or thousands of your Instagram followers spreading the word about your brand and campaign to everyone they know. For, this you need to efficiently devise a plan to incorporate multiple online channels for promotion.

Running an Instagram contest

There are various types of successful Instagram contests to try out. Let’s discuss the top two.

         1. Like to win

The modus operandi is to make the followers like an update from you. Clicking on the like button will automatically enter them into the content. Going a step ahead, you can also let entrants tag a friend to earn privilege points.

Pros

• Low entry barrier
• Help increase Instagram reach.
• Easy setup and management.

Cons

• Low engagement with an abundance of such contents.
• Not much effort, so taken lightly by the fans.
  

  2. Hashtag contests

As discussed, above, this is a UGC contest, where you ask participants to share content as photo or video representing your product or services by using a particular hashtag. It is found that social media users (especially youngsters) are highly enthusiastic about such contests.

Pros

• Help to build an emotional connection with the brand.
• Enhance reach as a user post by tagging the brand will be seen by their friends too.
• Hashtag bring the possibilities of the custom search for the specific entries.

Cons

• Asking users to do an activity for entry may not be so easy.
• If the instruction is too complicated as to a pic, upload, add the hashtag, and tag friends, it becomes a more laborious task.

Even though we discussed the top two, individual marketers can also think of many unique and creative ways for Instagram promotions to add engagement and interaction with the consumers. With more than 200 million active users and 16 billion images shared on this unique social network, there is no doubt that successful Instagram marketing campaigns can take you to places.