6 Steps to a Successful Instagram Promotion

| 2060 Digital

If your business is on Instagram, but hasn’t seen much traction as far as gaining followers or engagement, then it might be time to consider a promotion. Promotions get your current followers sharing your message with their followers, who then follow your brand and increase your reach. So if your Instagram account hasn’t played a huge part in your social media strategy, then creating a promotion is a fantastic way to start. Here are six steps that will help you get one off the ground.

1. Upload high quality, compelling contact. Before you start a successful Instagram promotion, you’re going to need a strong presence on Instagram. Choose one or two quality photos to upload each day that are relevant to your company and motivating for your target audience. Don’t forget to write brief captions and include a few appropriate hashtags for each image. Once you’ve got a good collection of photos, as well as more than just a few followers, you’re ready to take your account to the next level with a promotion.

2. Determine a goal and a prize. Think about why you’re running this promotion – are you hoping to cultivate general awareness of your business and increase the number of your followers, or are you wanting to get the word out and generate excitement about a new product or service? Then think about the prize. Connect the prize not only to the promotion, but also your brand. And make it meaningful. For example, coupons or freebie items that are worth $5 or less are not desirable for most people who are going to take the time to enter a contest. The more desirable a prize, the more people will want to make the effort to enter.

3. Set it up. Now, determine the dates, how people will enter and the official rules. All of these things should be clearly communicated to your followers on your promotional photo. And again, don’t forget your hashtags. Some people choose to create a special hashtag for a contest, making it easy to track the contest activity. Keep this information to the point and make it easy for people to find on the image. If they can’t figure out how to enter in just a matter of seconds, then they’ll move on to the next photo in their feed.

4. Spread the word. Go ahead and post your promotional image that includes the prize, how people enter (For instance, following your brand, taking a screen shot of your promotional photo and reposting on their account with the proper hashtags. Or, you could have users take their own photo that meets the qualifications you set in your promotional image and add hashtags and a comment that tells their followers to join in and follow your brand.), the dates the promotion will run, and a link to the official rules. Your followers will hopefully start sharing and you’ll get some people checking out the promotion without having to do anything else. But if you’re not seeing the response you’d like, feel free to do some cross-platform promotion and mention it on your Facebook page, Tweet about it or even talk to customers in person.

5. Monitor the results. The monitoring app, Statigram, can help you see how many photos have your hashtags included and how many likes and comments each photo in the contest has received.

6. Pick a winner. Select and notify your winner at the end of the promotional period and then post the results publicly. People enjoy seeing who has won and will be encouraged to enter more promotions from your company in the future because they’ve seen that their efforts, though maybe they didn’t win this time, are worth it.