Have you organized a giveaway among comments on Instagram and is it time to contact the winners? Once you have the list of the winners of the prize draw, time has come to contact the lucky ones so that they can receive their prize as soon as possible. But, how do you announce the result of the Instagram Giveaways and even more important, how do you get in touch with the winners?

Here we give you 5 ideas to how you can contact the winners of the giveaway on Instagram:

1. Include the link to the Winners page in the BIO
2. Edit the giveaway post to announce the end of the contest
3. Comment on the post to announce the winners and mention them
4. Publish a new Post or a Story with the winners
5. Use your other social networks to publish the winners
6. Present the result of your giveaway in Show Mode

Idea 1: Include the link to the Winners page in the Instagram BIO

Once you’ve run the prize draw and you have the list of the winners, the platform will give you a template with the winners and the alternate winners (the Winners page) and a link to the Certificate of validity. This template is ready to publish but the application gives you the tools to customize it as you wish.

This way, when you have customized the template if needed, you can disseminate the Winners page to your users.

One of the peculiarities of Instagram is that it’s not possible to put links nor in the post nor in the comments, but it is possible to put one (1) link in the BIO of the Instagram profile. Take advantage of this space to post the link to the Winners page with a line that draws the attention such as: “We now have the winners of the giveaway! Find out if you’re one of them here → + link”.

Idea 2: Edit the giveaway post to announce the end of the contest

The users that have participated in your giveaway will be eager to find out who the winners are. That’s why in the days following the end date of the contest, many will for sure pay attention to your profile and first of all, the giveaway post to find out whether they’ve won or not. This is why it’s a good idea to take advantage of the visibility of the post to communicate to your users that the giveaway has finished. To do that, edit the text of the same giveaway post (Instagram allows modification of the text of a post) and add a line in the beginning that highlights: “GIVEAWAY FINISHED! Check out the last comment to know who the winners are!”.

Idea 3: Communicate and mention the winners in a comment on the post

Instagram encourage the personalized and unique interactions between the brands and the personal profiles so a very good practice is to communicate personally to the winners that they’ve won. How? On Instagram, the easiest way to contact directly with a user is to use the mentions, so the most practical is to write a comment on the giveaway post where you include the names of the winners as a mention. This way, the winners will receive a notification on their profile that they were mentioned in a comment and they will receive the message in a very direct and personalized way.

Idea 4: Publish a new Post or a Story with the winners

Create a new post exclusively to announce the result of the giveaway. Upload the same creativity that you used in the giveaway post with a superimposed text that says: “We have found the winners!”. If you use the same image it will be much easier to attract the attention of the users that have participated in the giveaway because they will recognize the image and associate it with the contest.

You can also upload a screenshot of the customized Winners page that you’ve created with the template that Easypromos offers as the image of the post and this way show transparency.

In the comment of the post you can mention the winners so that they will receive a direct notification, and add the link to the winners page because even though Instagram doesn’t show links, if you use a URL shortener you can customize the link and make it easier to remember.

If for some reason you’re not interested in posting a post just to announce the winners, perhaps because your brand is very careful about the appearance of the posts on it’s profile, an alternative could be to post an Instagram Story so that it doesn’t stay on the profile permanently. This way you can use the Story to tell the users to check out the link in the BIO to see the result of the giveaway.

Tip! If your Instagram profile is verified, you have the possibility to link the Story to a URL which allows you to link the Story to the Winners page of the Giveaway.

Idea 5: Publish the Winners page on other social networks and other channels like your blog, newsletter or website.

Don’t forget to use your other social networks and channels of communication with your users to announce the result of the giveaway: Facebook, Twitter, sending a newsletter, or posting on your blog or even on your website. All channels are valid to announce the winners since you want to reach as many users as possible.

And remember that in all these channels, the link to the Winners page will be clickable so it will allow your users to see the Winners page of the giveaway easily.

Idea 6. Present the result of your giveaway in Show Mode

To share the result of the giveaway in a more exciting way, you have the "Show Mode" functionality, which will allow you to present the result of the giveaway in a dynamic format to make the announcement of the winners more entertaining and add surprise and fun to your giveaway.

Check in this tutorial how to obtain the presentation of the giveaway in Show Mode and discover here good practices and recommendations to share the giveaway video on Instagram.