7 Instagram Contest Ideas to Grow Brand Awareness

Instagram accounts that hold contests can achieve up to 70% faster follower growth than accounts that don’t hold contests.

If you want a popular Instagram account, coming up with and executing some Instagram contest ideas is a great start.

In this post, we’ll explore how you can use Instagram contests to raise brand awareness for your business.

We’ll also dive into some of the best practices to keep in mind when running your contests.

By the end, you’ll know how to run a successful Instagram contest that will bring your business the attention it deserves.

Why Instagram Contests Are a Good Idea

There are other ways to get more Instagram followers, of course, but few other methods can increase your follower numbers so quickly, and with such minimal effort.

Not only that: Instagram contests can also help you achieve more engagement.

Posts that are related to Instagram contests tend to earn roughly 64x more comments and 3.5x more likes when compared to ‘normal’ content.

instagram contest ideas - driving more engagement

On top of that, 91% of the posts that have achieved 1,000+ comments are contests.

Instagram content ideas - posts with most comments are contests

All of these stats show that running Instagram contests is one of the best ways to improve brand awareness.

If you’re worried about being stuck in a cycle of constantly churning out contests, all in the name of boosting brand awareness, don’t worry; you don’t need to continuously run contests to reap the benefits that good Instagram contest ideas can offer.

That’s because you’ll notice a trickle-down effect on the rest of your normal content as a result of running contests. People will feel a greater affinity toward your brand due to the goodwill you’ve generated with your contests.

As a result, they’ll be more likely to share and engage with your normal content.

Plus, because contests generate more followers, there will naturally be more people exposed to your content. This increases the likelihood that share and engagement levels will be higher than ‘pre-contest levels.

Best Practices for Running Contests on Instagram

Before you run your first contest, you need to be aware of some important best practices. Failure to follow some of these best practices could mean that you’re going against the rules of Instagram.

It could also lead to your contest producing lackluster results, which can amount to a lot of wasted effort.

What are these best practices?

The first is to make sure that you write a clear and detailed description for your contest.

When writing the description for your contest, be sure to cover: