Welcome to Wear Wag Repeat Episode 41: How to Run a Giveaway on Your Dog’s Instagram Account. Instagram giveaways can be a great way to grow your account, get exposure, build relationships with brands and grow your email list. In this episode I’m outlining a few different formats for Instagram giveaways, listing their pros and cons and explaining how to run your giveaway in an FTC and Instagram approved way! Whether it’s big or small, I highly recommend hosting a giveaway on your dog’s account this year.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

In addition to being a dog mom blogger, podcaster and online shop owner, I’m also an Instagram expert and coach. I’ve taught hundreds of entrepreneurs how to grow their Instagram accounts with soul and the law of attraction through one-on-one coaching and my online course. Over the past few years I’ve been involved in many dog-themed giveaways and seen what works and what doesn’t. Let my experience help you figure out how to run an amazing giveaway on your doggy IG account this year.

What are some different formats of Instagram Giveaways?

One format is when a couple of different accounts host the giveaway while teaming up with multiple accounts. You would find a couple of different brands donate prizes. The rules are to follow all of the accounts and comment on this post tagging friends or commenting to answer a question. And in order to get bonus entries, share a screenshot of it on your own feed or on your instagram stories.

Another option is to not require people to follow your account, but require a comment on the post and tag a couple of friends in it. And that is the only requirement for entry.

The last format I‘ve been playing around with is asking people to go to the link in my bio where they can enter via their email address. So commenting, liking, tagging, reposting, all that kind of stuff is not a requirement for entry. The only thing that people have to do to enter the giveaway is click the link on your bio and enter their email address. 

How can you use an Instagram giveaway to grow your email list?

I suggest you check out the episode with Barklynn Grace founder all about growing your email list. Giveaways are really, really easy to track how many entries you get when you’re doing it based on email collection. You can set up a really simple form. I use ConvertKit to host my emails. If you use Mailchimp or something else, it probably has a tool built in that you can make a landing page. You want to make it super duper simple. You don’t want to send them to your website because there’s actually too many distractions on there. There’s too much to click on. You really want to just send your Instagram people to a landing page where the only option for them is to enter their email address and enter your giveaway. That’s going to give you the highest conversion rate.

Are there FTC or Instagram rules that you need to follow in a giveaway?

At the bottom of the landing page, I added a disclosure that said, by entering this contest you have agreed to share your contact information with the hosts who are hosting this. So it’s really important to make sure that you’re adhering to FTC guidelines. So if you are collecting data from people like their email address, you have to tell them how you’re going to be using that before they sign up. And if they don’t want to be added to your list, then you have to give them an option to opt out of that.

How do I get products to give away?

I would recommend that you reach out to some different brands. Brands love to contribute products to giveaways like this because it gets their products out to their target audience as well. So just like you want to partner with other accounts as hosts who are in your niche, you want to make sure that the products and the brands that you’re reaching out to are in your niche.

So in terms of actually asking, you can reach out to people through DMs. If it’s a smaller brand, that can usually be a really good way to contact them because people are always checking their Instagram DMs. I also think it’s really professional. If you send someone an email, just do a little bit of extra research. You can probably find their email address in their Instagram bio. If it’s a really big company like Rover or something like that, you might want to actually search Linkedin and find out who at their company does marketing. Also I would suggest shying away from using the word donation in your outreach.

CHECK OUT THE SHOP!

The Wear Wag Repeat Shop is OPEN! to check it out and don’t forget to tag me on Instagram @tmistick if you liked this episode or order anything from the shop.

CHECK OUT THE COURSE!

Learn more about growing your dog’s Instagram account with my online course InstaMistick.

SUBSCRIBE AND REVIEW

Subscribe to the Wear Wag Repeat Podcast through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or Google Play so you don’t miss a single fun and inspiring episode!

If you love what you hear and want to support my efforts to shine a light on more creative dog moms, please leave a review for my show on iTunes*. For every review, I give Lucy an extra special treat… how could you deny her?! *If you’re on a computer, open the link then click View in iTunes to write a review.

You can also see all the episodes on the Podcast page of my site.