An Instagram loop giveaway is fairly popular on Instagram, but if you just heard of it you probably don’t know what it is. In this article, we’ll walk you through that and tell you everything you need to know about an Instagram loop giveaway.

What’s an Instagram loop giveaway?

An Instagram loop giveaway is named for the “loop” of people involved in running the giveaway, as well as the “loop” participants must follow in order to get a chance at winning. Loop giveaways are popular on Instagram and generally considered to be effective, but what are they exactly? In short, an Instagram loop giveaway uses the “loop” to spread likes and follows to the people within the loop. People are encouraged to follow this loop for the sake of rewards in the giveaway, and in this article we’ll explain the full process for you.

Part 1: The ‘Loop’

First, the loop of people pool together their cash and resources to pay for a prize. Sometimes this is something simple, like a gift card, but generally this is most effective when the group has a grand prize that’s relevant to most of their audience. For instance, if the participants were involved in a lot of gaming/tech, they may decide to give away a gaming console or high-end graphics card. Straight photography junkies might go for a high-quality camera, while digital artists would go for a drawing tablet, and so on. For the loop to be executed properly, all posts need to be made at the same time, ned to be the same image, and need to have tags linking to the next person in the chain. Be sure to decide the order of the chain earlier on. It’s important that the main prize chosen is valuable. Users have to go through more effort than they might be used to to enter a contest like this, knowing they might not win, so you need to make the reward enticing enough to justify the extra effort on their end of following the full loop.

Part 2: The Entry

Entering the contest, or following the loop, is the most important part of the giveaway. To make following the full loop easier for your followers, make sure the loop can be followed through tags. If you’re a member of the loop, you should have one person tagging you in their photo and you should tag the next person in the chain tagging you. With the chain followed properly, everyone will have a single tag leading to them and a tag leading to the next person, creating a perfect loop. Typically, entrants are expected to follow each person within the loop. Sometimes, this also includes liking every image, but this isn’t necessary for larger loops. Smaller loops will benefit the most from the extra engagement, but in most cases a simple follow should do the job.

Part 3: The Rewards

Finally, let’s talk about the rewards, both for the followers and for the people in the loop. In an Instagram loop giveaway, everyone should ideally walk away feeling like they gained something, even if they weren’t the prize winner. The obvious motivation behind running an Instagram loop giveaway is simple: to get a majority of the combined pool of followers. If your Instagram page is good enough, chances are a lot of these people will stick around, too. This may go without saying, but make sure that you’re running a quality Instagram before you take part in a loop like this. This is likely one of the only chances you’ll get to make the follows offered by this giveaway, so it’s important that you make a great impression on the people involved to keep their loyalty.

Part 4: Things To Consider

While most followers you gain should stay, especially if you run a good page, over time you’ll lose a portion of the people gained from the loop giveaway. This will usually be because they come from someone else in the loop who doesn’t share a whole lot in common with you, but other times it may be a force of habit on their end to unfollow Instagrams after giveaways. With this in mind, don’t immediately look at your new, high follower count at the peak of the giveaway. Ignore your follow count for a few days and just focus on posting some more content- at the end of this period, check your followers again to find out just how many stayed because they liked what you were doing with your page. Additionally, make sure that everyone in the giveaway is on the same page, and knows exactly when to post. If someone is late, they can risk breaking the loop for everyone else, reducing the effectiveness significantly. Make sure the agreed upon time is one that everyone can reasonably do- set an alarm or a timer if need be. Even an hour’s delay is enough to greatly harm an Instagram loop giveaway.

Learning More

Instagram loop giveaways are but one of many ways for creators to grow on Instagram. To maximize your Instagram growth, stay tuned to Grin. We offer a blog full of fully-fledged, detailed articles like this one that tell you all you need to know about growing on Instagram. Additionally, we also offer the powerful Grin Platform, which you can use to meet other Instagram creators like you. With the Grin Platform, you can buy and sell shoutouts, tags, shares, and we’re also adding loop giveaways. Our Market is run by creators, for creators, meaning all listings and purchases are made by people with the same goal: growing their content platforms online.