Creating Instagram competitions: 5 ideas for online contests

Are you looking to create online contests and prize giveaways on Instagram to gain followers and drive sales? Not sure where to start?

In this article we’ll run you through the hows, the whys, and give you 5 ideas for launching your online contests and promoting them on potentially the most versatile social media platform in the game.

Why choose Instagram for your online contests?

Instagram is an incredibly popular social network with over a billion users worldwide. It is a great way for brands, artists, entrepreneurs, and creators to showcase their work and passions to their followers, customers, and target audiences, and is an essential component of any eCommerce site’s approach to social media marketing.

Among all social networks, Instagram is significant in that it was one of the first ones that came optimised for mobile straight out of the box. When launched in 2010, it only allowed content to be framed in a square aspect ratio that matched the display width of that time’s most recent iPhone. This initial format has been cleverly updated over the years to allow it to compete with messaging-based social media services like SnapChat, as well as new disruptors picking up on the microcontent-focused approach like TikTok.

The current state of Instagram is a platform that ranks 2nd after Facebook in terms of having the most monthly users globally (or joint 3rd if you consider WhatsApp and Youtube social media platforms), and has the intuitiveness and agility to appeal to older generations as much as it’s an essential part of the social media diet of gen Z. This makes it a great playground for business owners and marketing teams to promote and run online contests. Whether it’s with the objective of promoting a new product, attracting new followers, or driving web traffic to strategic website pages, it’s an ideal platform to use as it has a lot of features that can showcase your games and allow you to tell the story of your competition.

The basic mechanics of Instagram

With Instagram, you have the possibility to make a post with a photo and a long caption, or a reel: a short video with music and a long caption. You also have the possibility to share stories on your profile, with a life span of 24 hours to broadcast your daily life, or livestream events, or the day-to-day of your business. You can also direct message other users, and easily share content through the same channel. What sets Instagram apart from other social networks is the potential quality of the content, the intuitiveness of the platform, and the attention generated by each post.

Users can interact with a like or comment, or enter contests to get involved with the brands they want to support. Overall, Instagram offers real potential to contest creators for their content to go viral to reach more people and convert more participants.

How to integrate an online contest in an Instagram Story?

The Story feature on Instagram is an ideal part of the platform on which to promote an online contest. When your audience swipes up on the Story, they can access the page dedicated to the online contest you’re running. To run a successful contest, you need to define the prizes for the winners, and state clear rules that include the different conditions, such as required calls to action (CTAs) to be entered into a prize draw, or just additional CTAs that aren’t necessarily a predetermined aspect of your contest.

The beauty of the Story feature here is that you can include multiple entries for your content, so you could include extracts of your contest’s key rules, or even hype up your prize with complimentary content. Each video or image in your Story should follow on sequentially in terms of relevance to provide a smooth user experience (UX).

Once this is defined, you can start publishing an Instagram Story announcing the contest. Make sure you highlight all the conditions of participation in a clear and concise way. Keep your sentences short with clear instructions: “Follow my account!” “Comment by tagging your friends!” “Click on the link in the bio to enter!” Don’t forget to include the end date of the contest in your post. The key is brevity: by only including the most important points, they’re given more weight for the user, and are more likely to make an impression and result in a user action.

Advertise the prize, keep promoting the contest

In addition, you will have to share at least one photo of each prize in order to encourage people to enter, and potentially even encourage people to learn more about the product, in the case that it’s a product that people could potentially win. For example, if your contest or giveaway being promoted on Instagram is a top of the line tech good, some of your audience may only be aware of its price point, or that it’s a big ticket item. The possibility of winning it encourages them to learn more about it, then, even if they don’t win, if they’ve learned that it can do X, Y and Z, that knowledge, coupled with a promotional code could result in an eventual sale.

Don’t hesitate to do two or three reminder Stories throughout the duration of your social media-based competitions. This will help increase engagements and allow you to reach a larger audience.

Generally speaking, just because you’re focusing your competition on Instagram, doesn’t mean that you’ll exclude other social media platforms. Creating contests on the Drimify gamification platform gives you the opportunity to easily share contests across social media platforms, like Facebook and LinkedIn, and all other networks on which your audience and target demographics are active on.

What kind of contests should I run on Instagram?

Choosing the right type of contest will depend largely on your objectives. Are you trying to grow your social media communities? Promote new products? Once you have identified your main objective, you can select the best type of contest for it. Think about your demographic and think about what contests they’re likely to enter. The prize and the game mechanics are the first step, then executing the promotion of the contest is how you deliver on those objectives.

For example, Photo Contests and Video Contests are great for gaining visibility and getting followers and participants to comment on posts. This will boost the visibility and engagement of the post. It is also possible to generate a trend based on choosing or promoting a branded hashtag for your contest. This strategy allows a larger number of people to be reached as you’re basically making your contest, and your brand more searchable.

Include custom promotional codes to measure the ROI of your Instagram contests

Promotional codes for discounts on promoted products, distributed through contests as flash prizes, can not only generate excitement among your followers and help to raise awareness of your brand, but also boost sales by encouraging your audience to buy your products at the improved rate. In addition, it is possible to track the traffic generated by these codes, and be able to better quantify the return on investment (ROI) of your contest.

5 ideas for contests on Instagram

Beyond the traditional Photo Contest, there are multiple possibilities to animate your community on this social network. Often, brands focus on Story interactions, where the heart of your audience, the superfans, will typically migrate to, and where it’s possible to include more content, and tell a product or brand narrative.

Games and contests created on the Drimify games creation platform can be easily linked in the body of a frame of the Story, or included in the link in bio.

1. A quiz on your brand’s products or services

The principle is simple: create a Quiz about your brand, or related to your brand or products, and publish it on Instagram with the hashtag of your choice. Then you can choose a winner from participants who either get all the answers correct, or from participants who finish in the top 10 of your leaderboard. How you customise the experience is entirely up to you.

2. Integrate an instant win game into the Story

To carry out this type of online contest, invite players to swipe up on your Story to access the instant game, which can be a Scratch Card in which gifts and promotional codes can be won, or a Spin the Wheel, or a Wheel of Fortune. For eCommerce retailers, promotional codes can be used at checkout, while not only promoting the brand, but also the various product ranges. It is also a good way to collect personal data, such as email addresses, and then contacting users who opt-in to marketing via targeted emailing.

3. A Memory Game to heighten concentration on your targeted content

Again, with the swipe up option on your Instagram Story, a Memory Game appears on users’ screens. As users play, cards are then turned over to show players your brand’s products or the icons of service features. When a match is made with two similar cards, a popup appears on the screen with additional content.

Playing through this contest experience, the user will be able to find details about your products or offerings. This is an excellent way to educate your consumers when you are positioned in a complex sector. It is possible to couple this game with a point system based on speed and accuracy, and then have a leaderboard to foster competition. When the competition ends, you can simply organise a prize draw or giveaway among the best players.

4. Use Sports games to appeal to sports fans

If your theme lends itself to it, you can customise a sports game (football, basketball, rugby, American football, with more in development) with your graphic identity and relevant copy, and create an online challenge with points and a ranking table. By using the codes of classic video games, you can offer experiential marketing to your fan base, and promote it to a wider audience on Instagram.

5. A discovery course with multiple opportunities to win prizes

This is a more original idea for a marketing competition, proposed by Drimify. With the Dynamic Path™ format, which allows you to create multiple levels or steps, you can offer a complete gamification experience including multiple types of games that follow each other to tell a brand or product story.

Through various online contests and games, users can discover your brand and its products, and will keep coming back as they will have multiple chances to win. This could involve a big prize draw for the top ranked players at the end of the experience, various mini-games and Quizzes where they can accumulate points, as well as interspersed instant win contests where they can win smaller prizes

On the same principle, and using the same Dynamic Path™ format, the Advent Calendar is a must during the Christmas period as it allows you to create engagement with your audience throughout the month of December, and offers the opportunity to discover a new surprise and potential prize every day.

Each stage of the course or calendar box can earn points for participants who appear on a leaderboard, allowing you to draw lots at the end to reward the best and most diligent participants. This digital calendar promotion could be applied to any occasion, or even a milestone or significant event for your business, like a product or service launch, or an anniversary.

Gamification: an ideal solution for social networks

Get creative with your contest ideas – what’s possible is only limited by imagination. At Drimify, we’ve developed a wide range of concepts and tools to run contests on Instagram and social media networks in general to connect with your audience. You can easily test these on our demo page and find the one that best suits your project.

Running online contests on Instagram is one of the most effective ways to promote your brand, reach a broader section of your target audience, and increase sales by distributing promo codes through an engaging experience, both for eCommerce, and as part of phygital campaigns, particularly when you have multiple bricks-and-mortar stores in across different areas to direct customers to. Additionally, you can benefit from the heightened user engagement that comes from entering into a challenge or game, and use that to get across your messaging and the unique selling points (USP) of your products and services.

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