1. Pick a prize/prize that will benefit your audience.
For example, if you have a beauty salon, do not play hair dye – your clients most likely do not need it (real case). As a prize, you can take a discount on a product or service, a free product or service – start from the interests and needs of the target audience. A simple example is a big giveaway for free and discounted services.
2. Make simple conditions for participation.
The actual mechanic is to repost the post-announcement of the contest in the Stories. It is not difficult, the unnecessary publication does not clog the member’s profile, and stories provide coverage and virality. The only drawback is that the story disappears after 24 hours, so you need to either ask to make a highlight for the duration of the competition or mark the participants in the table immediately, as soon as a repost notification arrives.
Already classic options – leave a comment under the contest post or mark from one to three friends. In the first case, you get an increase in engagement; in the second – engagement and virality. You can combine mechanics – as, for example, made One Two Trip. But the more difficult the conditions for participation, the more weighty the prize should be.
Leave a Comment + Tag Friends in One Post from One Two Trip. Another interesting mechanic that OneTwoTrip also used is to set a topic for comments. Then the participants do not just leave a comment for the sake of comment – they share their opinion (and many like to express their opinion and are pleased when a brand or blogger asks them about it) or, as in the post from the example, they come up with a story. With such a condition, a whole chat with heart-to-heart conversations can turn out – yes, such that in 14 hours, more than 3,000 comments will be typed under a contest post.
You can use a tricky move – add a condition that the more comments a person leaves, the higher the chance of winning. Or use the “STOP” mechanic – when, at a certain time, but unknown to the participants of the competition, you write “stop” in the comments, and the one whose comment will be the last one before it wins. An example of using the condition “the more comments – the higher the chance of winning.”
3. Be sure to put the post on promotion.
Without it, only 3 to 10% of subscribers will see the competition. If the budget allows, at the time of the competition, you can order advertising in the blogger. If not, set the conditions for participation that will give you the maximum virality: repost to stories or friends’ marks.
4. Announce winners publicly to ensure subscribers are sure of the fairness of the draw.
You can broadcast live or film the selection process and upload it to stories. Tag the accounts of the winners and be sure to write in the contest post that the drawing is over – in my practice, there was a case when new subscribers found an old publication and started participating.
Bonus – How to Determine the Winner:
The simplest mechanic is choosing through a random number generator.
1. Upload all comments under the contest post to the Excel spreadsheet through the LiveDune service. You can use a free trial plan or buy access to 1 account. Each participant will have a number in the table.
2. Drive into the random number generator a sequence from 1 to (here substitute the number of participants in the table) and click “generate”. The finished number can be screened or recorded on video the whole process.
3. Find the required number in the table, highlight it with a color, then go to the participant’s Instagram account and check if he fulfilled all the competitive conditions. Yes? Great, you have a winner! Not? Generate a new number. Also, record the process of determining the winner in the table on video.
4. Edit 2 videos into one or use the Unfold app – there are templates that allow you to place 2 videos on the screen.
5. Post stories and mark the winner. That’s all; the competition is over!
Bonus advice – do not hold draws too often; otherwise, you risk gathering freeloaders around you or devalue the product/service – people simply will not buy it but wait for the next competition.