Thursday, 25 Apr 2024
Social Media

Ways to Run a Photo Contest through Instagram

Irrespective of your size of business, you can definitely use various business tools through Instagram for increasing your brand awareness. The real users can be converted to the consumers of your product through different marketing strategies. Now, how can you generate a photo contest and attract a large number of users?

Using Instagram

Plan Your Contest:

  • Identify Target Market:  Before creating the contest, you must identify your target market properly. Your marketing plan will definitely vary between adult males and the teenage girls.
  • Create Goals:  Without proper objectives and goals, you cannot be successful in creating the photo contest.
  • Create Budget: Ensure that you have a well defined budget and always try to stick to it.
  • Select The Type: You should decide what type of contest you are going to run. The contests can be essay, video or vote contests. Through Instagram, it is advisable to select the photo contest above all.
  • Determine Time Frame: Try to determine a proper time frame for the contest. If you are offering an expensive prize, make your time frame longer. This is for spreading your words throughout the social networks. The younger generation prefers fast action. So a shorter time frame can be created for the young demographic.
  • Guidelines and Rules: As you are creating a contest, you must set proper guidelines and rules for the participants. If you require any legal documentation, sort them out before creating the contest.
  • Prepare Tools For Results: For measuring the success of the contest, you must possess proper tools. If you cannot find the required analytic features in the Instagram, you can also arrange a third party for measuring the key performance indicators (KPI). The Instagram followers can participate through this particular channel but for the in-depth analysis, you can take help from the third party.

Create Contest

  • Campaign Specific Hash Tag: For promoting your contest, you can create a specific hash tag. As soon as you are creating a hash tag, you are building a community for the entrants and whenever anybody enters the contests, they can easily take a view on the other photos of the contests.
  • Use App: When you are using an app to promote your contest, it takes only a few minutes. The app will include the tools for customer management with real time analytics. It can also provide options to run the contest through Twitter, Facebook or with other social sites.
  • Image of Prize: The picture of the prize must be appealing enough to attract the users to participate in the contest. The image must be included in every promotional matter of the contest.
  • Information to Choose Winner: How are you going to choose the winner? Is it going to be a vote or the winner will be decided through a particular panel of judges? Whatever may be the channel, you must share the detailed information with the participants or the potential participants. If you want to make your contest viral, you can choose the option of voting. The words of mouth spread from one person to the other in a very fast speed.

Promote Contest

After the contest is over, notify the winner and tell them how they can collect their prizes. The pictures of the winner can be posted and the users can build a trust so that they are interested in some upcoming contests.

Author Bio:  Simon Dawson is a social media expert who works in a reputed organization. In this article, he is providing tips for increasing the Instagram followers through a photo contest.