# Giveaway on Instagram: the benefits and risks of competitions

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Contents of article

As Instagram contests and giveaways become more popular, we decided to examine how this promotion strategy can help or harm an account. More clients are coming to us after people unfollow their profiles and their reach among real users drops sharply. After analysing dozens of these cases, we concluded that quick promotion methods often produce negative results.

## **A brief look at running promotions and collaborations.**

 **1.** You announce a giveaway among your followers (sometimes among the followers of several large accounts). Entering usually requires following you or several Instagram profiles.
 **2.** As a result, a fairly large share of the audience actively completes the requirements to get the offered freebies: T-shirts, underwear, iPhones, money and so on.
 **3.** When a contest ends, many participants see no benefit in the profile and gradually begin to unfollow, at an increasing rate.
 **4.** Instagram’s analytics system detects a sharp follower decline and concludes either that the followers were artificially added or that the profile has lost its appeal. This is where things turn unpleasant…
 **5.** Trust in the profile falls in Instagram’s analytics, reducing the likelihood of the account appearing in recommendations and followers’ feeds. People continue unfollowing for a long time, hindering promotion: until follower numbers begin growing again, Instagram considers the account uncompetitive.

## **Should you run a giveaway?**

 **1.** Yes, but only for a young profile whose popularity needs a quick boost. After the contest, however, attracting new real users will require active promotion such as mass following or mass liking.
 **2.** If your profile is already somewhat popular, run the giveaway from another, less popular profile that links to your main account.
 **3.** You can also run a giveaway if you are prepared for 50 to 90% of participants to unfollow you within a few months.
 **4.** If your profile is very popular and already has at least 100 000 real followers, a contest will have less effect on trust. You can run giveaways, but there will still be consequences, even if they are less noticeable.

**P.S.**: you should clearly understand that giveaways are effective for one-off promotions, but running them regularly or frequently can have irreversible consequences for a profile. This information will remain relevant until Instagram adapts its analytics system for such cases, although we doubt that will happen in the near future.

For more about the ways to promote social media accounts, we recommend training at the BoS Technologies SMM school through this link: [Information about the SMM school](http://school.bos.bz/about.html).

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