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How to Host an Instagram Loop Giveaway

By Snap Agency April 12, 2016

Want to know how to grow your social following?

Ever wonder how accounts team up with brands to give away free stuff?

Want to know how to host a loop giveaway on Instagram?

Well, let me tell ya! I recently ran a loop giveaway with a handful of wonderful brands on Instagram and had a ton of fun, but, most importantly, I had an increase in engagement, following and brand awareness. We got in front of 28,732 users.
The first thing you have to do is have one main point of contact to figure out logistics—like Snap. Yes, hosting a loop giveaway is not rocket science, but it is definitely time-consuming and having a logistical wizard saves you time and headaches.

How It Works

Instagram is one of the most popular social media tools and one of the easiest ways to gain followers, likes, brand awareness and traffic to your website. Instagram loop giveaways incorporate anywhere from 5–30 brands that are interested in collaboration on a giveaway or hosting a contest. Always have a cohesive graphic that everyone will post at the same time and you will tag a fellow (predetermined) brand participating in the loop within the photo.
$500 west elm (1)
Brand 1 tags Brand 2
Brand 2 tags Brand 3
Brand 3 tags Brand 4
Brand 4 tags Brand 5
Brand 5 tags Brand 6
Brand 6 tags Brand 7
Brand 7 tags Brand 8
Brand 8 tags Brand 1
If someone comes across your post, they will like it, follow the new person and continue on in the loop until they give back to your page.
Loop giveaways are extremely helpful for brands as they allow new brands to piggyback on other established brands to increase followers. In our case, a few of our clients are MN home brands, and we wanted to center the loop around home and collaborate with local businesses and brands. The goal is to maintain these followers long term, so you want your brands to be cohesive.

Find Brands

The first step to any loop giveaway is to find brands to participate. Don’t be afraid to reach out! At Snap, we look at our clients and determine if we can loop any together if they have related industries and then we look at their competitors with a high following, engagement visual appeal. Yes, you heard right, I said your competitors! If you support and engage with your competitors online, magical things can happen. And that’s what we do at Snap. Once you have found and confirmed your brands, you layout the rules for them.

Mercury Mosaics is a perfect example of an Instagram account with visually appealing content.

Screen Shot 2016-03-31 at 2.27.47 PM

Rules

The theme of the giveaway loop will determine your text for caption copy within and under images. For this particular loop, we asked everyone to say something like what’s below, but that they obviously format it in their own voice:
“We’re so excited to be hosting a GIVEAWAY with a team of MN home brands. Being we all love home design so much, we are giving one lucky winner a $500 gift card to West Elm. Enter to win:
  • Follow all of the accounts in the loop
  • Comment below with a friend’s name that should enter to win, too
  • Tap the photo to see where to go next
  • Remember you must follow ALL Instagram accounts in order for your entry to be valid
  • Once you get back here, you’ve completed the loop!
  • Winners will be announced on Friday!”

Tips

  • To create bullet points and spaces, you write the content within your “notes” app on your phone. Copy and paste this into your image description.
  • Make sure to tag the next brand within the photo and not in the text.
  • Feel free to edit per your voice/brand, but maintain the message that needs to get across.
  • Place all of your hashtags in the comments so they get buried by people entering to win. If you want a list of great hashtags with wide reach, let me know and I can get them for you.
  • Go ahead and tease the giveaway on Twitter and Facebook. Even send out an email blast to your subscribers if you wish!

Tools

There are a ton of great tools out there to monitor your loop giveaway. I typically use Iconsquare. This tool tracks analytics and conversations, and it picks an anonymous winner for you.

Promote!

Once your loop goes live, don’t think you can just sit back and relax. It takes teamwork and a lot of interaction. To help with promotion, here a few things you could do (this includes everyone within the loop).

1. Comment and tag someone on one another’s posts—preferably someone who isn’t already following you.

2. Promote on your other social channels to drive people to your Instagram account. This is another great way to let your friends and followers on other social channels know that you’re on other platforms and doing different and cool things. It’s a perfect way to build your tribe! For Roost Real Estate, we featured the same brand-cohesive image across their Facebook channel, which drove people to follow them on Instagram and enter into the contest. This is the perfect way to give a little teaser on what you’re doing on your other social channels and why they should be following you there.

Screen Shot 2016-03-31 at 11.44.22 AM

3. Promote the giveaway throughout the week.

4. Use hashtags!
Good hashtags to use:

#giveaway #giveaways #liketowin #giveawaycontest #giveawaytime #giftcardgiveaway #tagtowin #giveawaycontests

5. Engage! Engage! Engage!

And don’t forget to have fun! Go rock and roll and build that tribe! And if you need any guidance, feel free to reach out—morgan@snapagency.com