In this article, we’ll be discussing the 8 greatest collab ideas for Instagram. By the time you’ve finished, you’ll know all the best ways to collab with your friends on Instagram. With that in mind, let’s begin.

Why collaborate on Instagram?

The first question that many people might ask is why collaborate on Instagram, anyways. Collaborations and the benefits of those collaborations are a lot more visible on a platform like YouTube, but for some, getting the same success on Instagram with similar tactics may come across as impossible, or unlikely. It is true that collaborations don’t work the same across both platforms. However, with this list of Instagram collab ideas applied in the right way, you can experience great results with your Instagram following. Let’s dive right in.

The Best Collab Ideas For Instagram

1. Take Over The Other’s Pages

First and foremost is taking over each other’s pages. This is a surprisingly effective one- by swapping control of each other’s pages, you two can provide new interactions and a new flavor of posting to both of your followings, all without them needing to lift a finger. Very few people will react negatively to this, especially not if you guys execute it properly and ensure both pages remain entertaining. That being said, it’s important not to do this for too long- a week at maximum, a day at minimum. Stretching it for too long will risk alienating your following, while doing it for too short a length of time won’t have any effect at all.

2. Make An Appearance In Each Other’s Photos

This is another great way to collab on Instagram: make an appearance in each other’s photo’s, and tag one another! Doing this will organically draw interest to the other person, and encourage many people to check the other person’s profile of their own accord. Don’t tell them to, or anything- just tag them, and let the users feel like they’re doing it all by themselves, without being pushed. This is usually a very effective way of doing things and ensuring audience crossover.

3. Make A Video Together

Another one of our collab ideas for Instagram is to make a video together! This video can be posted on both of your profiles, and should directly link to the other person’s profile to ensure that both audiences see it and are encouraged to look at the other person’s Instagram page. Instagram videos currently allow videos anywhere from 3 seconds (think Vine or Snapchat) to a full minute. This is plenty of time a short comedic skit, and with the minute time restriction, you can look to Vine’s best for some creative ways to work around making great impressions in a short amount of time. As long as it’s good, videos will keep your viewers fairly engaged and encourage them to follow the people involved. Keep the amount of collaborators in a video to two or three, though- any more, and you’ll risk overflowing them with pages to follow, and that could be a real problem. There’s only so much you can reasonably do in a minute of footage, anyways.

4. Start A Challenge Post Together

This is a great one! Challenge posts tend to spread quickly on Instagram, since people love to take part in interactive activities and pass on the challenge to their friends. The two of you can come up with a challenge together, and post it on both of your profiles while linking to the other person. You’ll also need to create a special hashtag just for the challenge. But once you’ve done that, provided your challenge is fun or entertaining, people will come in droves to see what it’s all about. Lay out the rules and restrictions of the challenge in the original post, then wait and see how many people take part in the challenge. The challenge is even better if you can provide a prize for the person who does it best, but this isn’t always necessary.

5. Run A Contest Together

Another of the best collab ideas for Instagram is to run a contest together. Depending on your execution, this can work similarly to what a challenge post would be, but ideally contests will really push the limits of what people will do on Instagram. With a challenge post, you want something reasonable that people can probably do within an hour, at most, to participate. With a contest, you’re welcome to go wild, since you’ll definitely be offering a prize. The better the prize, the wilder it should get! Contest entries should all require a share of the original post, and the main entry post in the contest-specific hashtag. People who see the terms of the contest may be incentivized to join it themselves to try for the prize, and the entries themselves should also be interesting to watch.

6. Run A Loop Giveaway Together

A loop giveaway will require multiple people, or a loop. With a loop giveaway, entrants are told to follow a loop and follow all the people within the loop for a chance at a very good prize. Typically, you’ll do this by having everyone post the same photo, then tagging the next person in the chain so a participant can just keep clicking and following to make their entry. Because of the effort required, prizes need to be good enough to incentivize such a thing. Loop giveaways are actually pretty complicated, though, so click here to read more about Instagram loop giveaways. 

7. Run A Page Together

This may come off as a no-brainer, but it’s one of the Instagram collab ideas not many people seem to think of. Run an Instagram page together! This page doesn’t need to have personal posts from either of you- instead, it can post themed pictures, memes, and more, depending on the theme you want to go for with this page. If your collab page is popular, you’re likely to get plenty of new followers coming in to both of your main accounts from the page you run together.

8. Work Together On Sponsorships

Last but not least, there’s working together on sponsored posts. Many Instagrammers work with sponsors: this is a dual-sided relationship, where the IGer works for money or rewards and the sponsor receives their advertising in return. Working a friend on Instagram into this loop will make this deal even more attractive for the brand involved, and make the posts more interesting for you and your followers!

Learning More

And that’s it. Those are the 8 greatest collab ideas for Instagram, and just about any kind of Instagram collab you can think of will fit under one of those entries. To learn more about growing on Instagram and other platforms, stay tuned to our blog here on Grin. For help from other Instagram creators, use the Grin Platform to buy and sell shoutouts, shares and more from other creators like you.