A note on Rocket Lawyer: this site offers a free contest rules wizard to help you build them for your sweepstakes or contest. The document is free with a one-week free trial.

Before you launch your promotion, be sure to research the social media contest rules for each platform where you plan to promote your contest or giveaway. A lottery consists of three things:. Federal and state laws prohibit private entities from running lotteries.

If your promotion includes the three elements above — consideration, chance, and prize, you may have created an illegal lottery. A contest is a promotion where winners are, presumably, chosen based on skill. There is little-to-no random chance involved.

Ensure that your promotion is a legitimate contest or sweepstakes — avoid creating an illegal lottery. Do not require your participants to purchase anything to enter your giveaway. Make your contest or giveaway rules widely available and ensure they comply with applicable federal, state, and local laws.

People and governments are getting more and more serious about protecting their privacy and understanding how businesses plan to use the data they collect from consumers.

You should include a link to your privacy policy or craft one specific to your campaign. The example below is just an example of what your giveaway or contest rules could look like.

Bracketed fields represent areas you could replace with information specific to your promotion. If you decide to use this template, you assume all of the associated risks.

Consult with a legal expert to ensure your final set of rules is compliant with current state and federal laws. Neither Woobox nor the author is providing legal advice. Starter Template — Giveaway or Contest Rules.

In this section, define who is eligible for the contest or giveaway. Be thorough and specific. Be sure to mention who is NOT eligible as well. List your company name and address in this section. Explain how the sponsor s will conduct the promotion as described in your Official Rules.

Include verbiage that talks about your right to refuse, withdraw, or disqualify entries at your sole discretion. You should also incorporate language that participant agrees to accept the decision of the Sponsor as final and binding. Define the promotion period by giving the start date and time include your time zone and the end date and time with the time zone.

These are the dates that you will receive and accept entries. Explain the accepted methods for entering your contest or giveaway.

Define things like the number of entries allowed per person, how to earn bonus entries, any limitations on bonus entries, etc. Provide information about what the winner s will receive and include the estimated retail value. Determine if you need to include information about whether or not the prize is transferable, how prizes may be substituted at your sole discretion, how acceptance of the prize grants you permission to use the Winners entry, name, and likeness for advertising, promotion, and trade without further compensation or remuneration unless prohibited by law.

Provide a statement about how the odds of winning is dependent upon the number of eligible entries received. In this section, explain how the winner will be selected random drawing, a panel of judges if a skills-based contest, etc. under your supervision. Tell giveaway entrants how and when you plan to notify the winner.

Additional considerations include 1 circumstances under which you may select an alternate winner, receipt of the prize is upon the condition of compliance with federal, state, and local laws, etc. Here, you should explain the rights that the participant grants to you, the Sponsor, upon submission of an entry into the giveaway or contest.

Discuss your rights to disqualify anyone who violates the terms, as well as your rights to seek damages to the fullest extent permitted by law in cases where a participant has caused deliberate damage or undermined the legal operation of the promotion.

The rules can be, for example, to follow both pages. These giveaways can take place on the Instagram page of your brand or on the page of the digital influencer of your choice. An excellent way to promote a new release is by announcing a giveaway.

This type of approach can work best when your brand's image is already well established. What do Christmas, Father's Day, Easter, all have in common? It is at these times that sales increase in any business.

A giveaway is a good way to promote your brand and display your products in key times. Inciting comments by asking followers why they deserve to win will create engagement on your page while letting you know your audience closely.

This is an example of a risky attempt and should choose a reward to match. Asking, for example, to comment, like, or tag different friends in all of your page's posts over a certain period of time is a good way to ensure that your followers are aware of your activity.

Asking your followers to complete sentences, for example, can be a fun way to generate activity in your post. A good option is to encourage them to tag a friend. The most creative or right answer may be the winner.

This way, you're telling your audience that they are important to you and that they will be rewarded for it. Creating a contest where you promote a job offer, for example, is a good way to ensure that your future employee knows your brand.

This proposal should, however, be well-thought-out and in sync with the way your brand communicates, but it can be the ideal way to recruit a creative mind, for example.

If, for example, you have a music store, you can take advantage of National Music Day, or similar dates, to promote your brand and your products, while raising awareness to a cause that is dear to you.

Promote a photo contest If this fits your brand's concept, you can ask your followers to share photos with or related to your products on their personal profiles. Create the caption for a post This is a creative and fun way to create engagement.

Create a slogan for the brand This proposal clearly tells the followers that their opinion is important. Create the brand logo or the packaging for a new product As in the previous suggestion, asking for these interactions brings your brand closer to its audience and gives you a sense of how they see it.

Periodic Contests When creating periodic contests weekly, monthly, semiannual, annual, etc. Votes in the comments This is a good way to create engagement and learn what are the audience's preferences.

Flash Giveaway on Instagram Stories This is a bolder proposal, as it lasts only 24 hours. Parceria com influencers These giveaways can take place on the Instagram page of your brand or on the page of the digital influencer of your choice.

So think about what you can ask participants to do to meet your goals. For instance, you could ask Instagram users to refer friends or visit your Instagram profile to get new followers. Or, to improve website traffic , you can ask your target audience to leave a comment on a blog post or visit a product page in return for more entries.

So keep your contest prize ideas and methods of entering as relevant to your audience as possible. Luckily, many places offer free templates and graphics you can customize, such as Canva, the popular image editing website.

You can also use a giveaway tool like RafflePress , which includes pre-made giveaway templates for Instagram. Our first offering is a classic example of what we call news-jacking.

Newsjacking is when a brand or business uses trending news topics to boost engagement and attract potential customers. In this example, a famous coffee brand uses the news of a virus spread as an excuse to promote its brand with a giveaway. And their main goal is to grow their audience.

To be in with a chance to win the contest and get extra entries, fans should take the following actions:. If you were to run this type of contest using RafflePress, you could use the Instagram giveaway template. It comes with actions to visit your Instagram account and view an Instagram post or video.

Next up, we have a giveaway post that promotes a new product range. It includes a slideshow of 4 product versions, with the chance to win 1 by picking a favorite. You can create these types of Instagram contests in RafflePress by choosing the Instagram template suggested above and including the Surveys and Polls entry action.

This action lets you set up a quick poll where people can easily vote on their favorite. Just make sure you include an image with all prize options labeled clearly.

This cute Instagram contest example uses the start of a new season to promote their account and products. Innovative brands can capitalize on this idea by turning it into a social media photo contest with viral refer-a-friend entries.

In fact, including multiple winners can help you promote different products. In this bright example, a tattooist gives followers 3 chances to win, with the first prize being a free tattoo.

Because this contest is all about building a following, the Instagram contest template from RafflePress would be ideal. You could even go a step further by creating a branded hashtag to keep track of and promote your contest.

Next is an excellent example of a business using the popularity of a product to grow its account. Big-ticket items such as this are highly desirable, so they will drive tons of entries. It induces the fear of missing out on people desperate to get their hands on it.

This action saves your contest post from being clogged with comment spam and helps you keep everything organized. In this case, the holiday is St. You could even throw in a gift card to increase the value. Next up is a contest from a larger brand that features its products as part of a prize bundle.

And it works because it taps into the audience of both brands for a greater reach. Fans need to follow the 2 brands and tag a friend in the comments to win this bundle of breakfast goodies. In this example, the beauty brand Benefit Cosmetics teams up with a relevant brand to raise awareness for its products.

An easy way to improve the quality of contest entrants for this giveaway they could use RafflePress to accept user-generated content. By asking people to upload photos of their best beauty looks, they could feature the content on their websites to gain extra traffic.

For this contest, entrants can choose any bike as the prize. This giveaway idea encourages people to visit the product website and browse the opportunities, resulting in more traffic. You could quickly improve engagement in this contest by including a question or poll asking for their favorite choice.

Sometimes reaching a milestone can be a great excuse to run a contest and celebrate. What if you miss out on something extraordinary? You may have noticed there are hashtags for everything nowadays.

And the same can be said for giveaways. Instagram has a giveaway hashtag specifically for Wednesdays called winitwednesday. Regular giveaway hashtags can increase the reach of your contests. This is down to the hashtag being so popular that people actively seek it to find superb competitions to enter.

This brand uses a hashtag contest to promote its product and increase contest entries. They also encourage engagement by asking people to explain why they want the product. Ever thought about working with an influencer to promote your brand? Doing so can open you to a whole new audience of engaged potential customers.

In this Instagram giveaway post example, a brand partnered with an influencer to promote their products, resulting in tons of engagement and traffic to both parties. Offering cash as a prize for your contest can be a quick win for all businesses.

There are no fancy product shots to take. And money is easy enough to transfer via PayPal and so on. You can learn more about verifying actions in the documentation here. Instagram like and comment contests are probably some of the most popular giveaway ideas on Instagram. Yet managing and verifying all those likes and comments can be difficult if you attract tons of entries.

This Instagram giveaway example generated almost 6, likes and almost as many comments. Just include the action for users to visit your Instagram post and invent your own, asking them to leave a link to their comment. The great thing about taking this approach is all the entries will be right inside the entry management dashboard.

This makes it easier to see at-a-glance who has qualified correctly. Then you can use the built-in random winner picker to announce the winner of your contest. You can use a similar approach to the previous Instagram contest with this example. In this giveaway post, users are asked to tag a friend in the comments and follow 2 different Instagram accounts to enter.

With RafflePress, you can ask users to visit each Instagram account. There are many ways to run competitions on Instagram and plenty of tools to make the whole process easier. Gleam vs. From comparing all the pros and cons, we settled on RafflePress as the best tool for creating an online contest.

RafflePress is the best WordPress giveaway plugin around right now. And with its modern interface, drag-and-drop giveaway builder, and viral giveaway templates Including an Instagram contest template , you can create any contest.

Built-in social actions help you grow your email list , website traffic, and social media followers with viral contests. You might also be wondering how to track your contests on Instagram. And RafflePress has this covered too. But if you want to go a step further, you can use a WordPress analytics tool like MonsterInsights to track visits to giveaway landing pages , referral traffic, and website activity.

And with MonsterInsights dashboard reporting , you can see the results right from within WordPress. Then you can see which strategies have the best results for your promotions, which you can use in future giveaways. Check out this MonsterInsights review to learn how it works.

Running an Instagram giveaway is legal. However, you should check any laws that might apply in your area to stay compliant. Another way to get contest entries is to direct people from your social media channels to a contest landing page.

This can be done through organic or boosted posts , Or, or even just a regular social media post. Travel brand Expedia used this tactic in its ThrowMeBack Twitter contest which let entrants revisit a vacation from the past after signing up through the landing page.

We threw this family back to their tbt. Social media contests are an excellent way to let your customers or target audience know about your brand , product , or service.

Not only that, they can also be used to increase brand awareness and reach new potential customers. Here are three fun social media contest ideas that you can use to increase brand awareness for your business.

Collaborating with another brand or influencer in your industry is a great way to reach a new audience and get people talking about your brand. For example, you could team up with an influencer to give away one of your products to their followers.

Or, you could partner with a relevant brand to double the prize offers of your contest. Local Vancouver restaurant chain Nuba took advantage of this technique when they partnered with yoga studio Jaybird.

Both brands focus on nourishing the body and the mind, so the contest was a perfect fit. A post shared by Nuba Feel Good Lebanese nubatown. Hashtag challenges are a great way to get people involved and engaged with your brand. All you need is a catchy hashtag and some prize incentives!

The contest called on users to share a video of themselves making their mom smile. In just two weeks, the hashtag received over 5. Platforms like Snapchat now offer branded lenses and AR filters that users can play around with.

This provides a great opportunity for brands to get in on the fun and host a contest using these features. Users could use these features in their daily snaps, or unlock a mountain zorbing game where they dodged obstacles while flying down a slippery slope.

Players won free packs of cookies as prizes. This campaign helped Oreo connect with a younger audience and get their attention with something new and exciting.

Ready to run your next social media contest? Use this template to launch your next social media contest and drive more engagement , leads , and sales for your business. Click below to download the free social media contest template.

Are you looking to increase engagement? Drive traffic to your website? Boost brand awareness? Pro tip: Make sure you set S. goals for yourself: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timebound. For example, We hope to gain 1, new followers within 1 week of running this Instagram contest.

Your prize should be relevant to your contest goals and audience. Make sure you give people enough time to enter the contest. Pro tip: Use Hootsuite to schedule your social media posts in advance.

Teaming up with an influencer is a great way to get the word out about your contest. Make sure to choose an influencer who has a similar target audience to yours. For example, Facebook wants it to be clear your contest is not affiliated with their brand. Instagram requires you to have official rules laid out for each contest.

There are a few ways you can pick winners fairly :. That way, there are no surprises when the contest is over. Hootsuite Analytics can also help you track how much reach and engagement your contest is getting. Track contest-related shares , hashtags , and more to see how far your contest is shared.

Save time and run your next social media contest with Hootsuite. Promote it across all the major networks, engage your followers, and manage user-generated content in one place.

Try it free today. Get Started. Do it better with Hootsuite , the all-in-one social media tool. Stay on top of things, grow, and beat the competition.

Hannah Macready is a freelance writer with 12 years of experience in social media and digital marketing. In her spare time, Hannah likes exploring the outdoors with her two dogs, Soup and Salad.

Considering TikTok marketing for your business or organization? Find out how to make the most of this engaging social network. Find out how Instagram analytics tools help you track performance and pin down opportunities for improvement, and review the best options available.

Find out how to use Instagram analytics to track your performance, uncover valuable insights, and improve your Instagram strategy. Table of Contents. What is a social media contest? Social media contest template. How to run a social media contest.

View this post on Instagram. Free Day Trial.