Loop giveaways have increased in popularity lately to get more people following on Instagram – but what are they? How do they work, and are they worth taking part in them?
First, the basics. A loop giveaway is when you get together with a number of accounts to offer a prize, and have certain requirements that the chosen winner must have completed to be eligible.
Loop giveaways have been a thing in blog land for a few years now, but they were never that popular, especially in the UK. Instagram seems to be simplifying some of the requirements for followers which may explain why they have become so popular, but they’re still a very US centric way to gain followers.
The number of accounts in a loop will be dependent on whoever has set it up, but the larger the group, the more likely that the prize involved will be bigger – for example, we’ve seen loop giveaways offering a MacBook Pro as the prize, but you had to follow 25 different accounts. As someone taking part in the loop, you would contribute a fraction of the cost of the prize.
If you were to take part (or even organise) a loop giveaway, you should try to partner up with accounts that are similar to you so you gain followers that are more likely to keep on following you afterwards. You could also make sure that the prize is more attractive to the sort of people that you want following you – if you’re a beauty blogger, then you could give away a Sephora gift card or a fitness blogger loop could be giving away a years gym membership to a top club and a gift card to a sportswear store.
If you did end up organising a loop giveaway, you would need to set the rules before reaching out to other bloggers to join in – things to consider would be what the prize would be, what the rules would be (could people do things like tag friends for extra entries?) You would also need to set the time when the image would be posted on everyone’s feed (so you’d want to choose a time when everyone would have access to their Instagram account) and create a caption for them to copy and paste, changing the next person in the loop. E.g. if you have a loop giveaway with 5 people in, person 1 needs to tag person 2, 2 tags 3, 3 tags 4, 4 tags 5 and person 5 tags person 1 – which explains why it’s called a loop!
The positive in taking part in a loop giveaway is that you’ll gain lots of new followers – but are they likely to stick around after the giveaway ends? It’s very likely that once someone has been chosen as the winner, the accounts that followed you will hit that unfollow button, or they may be dummy accounts that people have set up just to take part in giveaways. (Note – in the UK, all entrants in a giveaway must have equal chance and you can’t exclude someone just because they are not using their “real” account.)
However, it’s important to consider the other side of a loop giveaway – yes, it’s awesome that you would increase your following significantly in a short period, but if a brand is using something like Social Blade to judge whether your following is a good one, it could look spammy if you’ve jumped up by a significant amount quickly or if your following count drops after the giveaway ends.
How do you feel about loop giveaways – have you ever taken part in one, and would you recommend it? As a follower, do you love or hate them?
