Instagram Giveaway Rules and Guidelines

Running giveaways on Instagram is a fantastic way to engage your audience, drive growth, and help you reach all your marketing goals.

Whether you're running quick and easy giveaways directly on Instagram, community photo contests, or more elaborate and powerful opt-in giveaways you'll need to ensure that you're outlining clear and transparent rules and guidelines for your campaign and following Instagram’s official rules.

We're going to take you through an in-depth breakdown of what you'll need to include in the rules, or terms and conditions, that govern your giveaways.

Instagram’s guidelines for promotions explicitly require you to:

You cannot ask users to tag themselves in content they are not featured in, tag content or encourage false engagement that violates Instagram’s guidelines.

You are responsible for ensuring that your giveaway complies with applicable laws and regulations, including those governing privacy, intellectual property, and advertising.

If your giveaway is sponsored by another brand, you must clearly disclose this using hashtags like #ad or #sponsored, or Instagram’s paid partnership tag.

In addition to Instagram’s guidelines, you need to adhere to local laws and regulations.

These include:

• Privacy Laws: Make sure you handle participant data responsibly and in compliance with laws like GDPR (Europe) or CCPA (California).
• No Purchase Necessary: Most jurisdictions prohibit requiring a purchase to enter, as it may turn your giveaway into an illegal lottery. You can check out our guide on No Purchase Necessary Laws to learn more.

Once you’ve ensured compliance with Instagram’s guidelines and legal requirements, you also need to create clear terms and conditions for your giveaway.

These should outline all the details participants need to know.

Instagram's Promotion Guidelines state that anytime you run an Instagram contest or giveaway you must provide:

Acknowledgment that the promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Instagram.

If you run your giveaway with Gleam we will automatically include the Instagram release to your terms and conditions.

There's no point running an awesome photo contest if you aren't even allowed to use the great user-generated content in your marketing campaigns.

So, make sure you gain explicit consent to use the content (and data!) you collect beyond the giveaway.

If your giveaway is being sponsored or hosted by any brands or companies you are required to include their names in your giveaway. It's a good move to tag these other brands in your Instagram caption if possible.

If you are sponsoring a giveaway or your giveaway is sponsored by another brand, this is an adverstisment that you must disclose using #ad, #sponsored, or by using the paid partnership tag.

You also need to make it perfectly clear what exactly it is you're giving away, and whether the sponsor reserves the right to substitute a prize of equal or greater value if necessary. This includes any relevant specifications or stipulations that may be present.

You'll also need to include information on how the prize will be delivered to winners.

You need to make the opening and closing dates of your giveaway perfectly clear from the get-go. This includes when your giveaway starts, when you will stop collecting submissions and when winners will be drawn.

You should also specify what time zone you start and end times are in.

If your giveaway is only open to individuals aged 18 years or older, or residents of particular states or countries, then you need to specify this in the terms and conditions of your giveaway.

Perhaps the most important component of your giveaway rules is providing clear instructions and guidelines on how users have to enter.

If you're running your giveaway directly on Instagram you will need to precisely outline all the steps users will need to take to enter — especially if your entry method requires that the entrant agrees to tag themselves in a post or comment.

If you're running your giveaway on your website or an external platform then you can detail your entry requirements there and use your Instagram posts to instruct users to follow the link in your bio and follow the instructions there to enter.

Another key piece of information you will need to include in your terms and conditions are the details of how you will be choosing winners. This includes when winners will be selected, and if they will be randomly chosen or picked based on another criteria.

You will also need to specify how you will be announcing and contacting winners and if you will need an email address or contact details, and how long winners will have to claim their prize before it is redrawn. It's a good idea to announce your winners with an Instagram post as well as directly contacting them.

It's also important to include information about when and how the prize will be delivered to winners. This includes specifying if the winner is responsible for picking up prizes or paying for shipping cost.

If you're running a photo contest on Instagram there are some extra terms and conditions you will need to add in addition to those we've mentioned above.

You'll to specify what types of photos, videos, or other content you want users to submit. The clearer your instructions are, the higher quality of submission you will receive, and the more value you will get from your contest.

You will also need to instruct participants on how they need to tag their submissions. The best ways to get entrants to tag their submission posts are by using a designated #hashtag or tagging you in the post with a @mention.

This will make it easy for you to collect entries and choose winners.

You should also provide a clear and transparent overview of how you will be selecting winners for your contest.

Specify if winners will be selected randomly or based on merit, and if your winners are picked on merit outline exactly what your selection criteria is.

Anytime you run a photo contest you want to be able to collect the best user-generated content you receive to use in your own future marketing efforts.

You should make it clear in your terms and conditions that by entering your contest users are giving you permission to repost or use their submissions in your own marketing content.

If you run your Instagram photo contest with Gleam you can easily get explicit permission to use UGC, and even import submissions directly into a stylish gallery where you can display them on your website.

Running opt-in giveaways with a 3rd party app such as Gleam gives you an opportunity to take your Instagram giveaways to the next level.

You can run Gleam giveaways on your own website or a dedicated landing page we provide and drive traffic to your campaign from Instagram and beyond.

This type of giveaway gives you the ability to drive more powerful actions across multiple platforms and maximise participation by driving traffic from multiple sources.

Writing your own terms and conditions is a hassle, and so is checking entries, spotting fraudulent or bad actors, filtering out ineligible submissions, and ensuring the winner is picked fairly. Gleam takes care of all this for you, saving you time and letting you focus on the fun part of your campaign.

The only real downside to this approach is that 3rd party giveaway apps are prohibited from incentivising likes and follows. While this isn't ideal, the added ability to drive and track an enormous array of meaningful actions including email signups and direct traffic to your campaign from all your channels makes it well and truly the most effective type of giveaway you can run.

Take a look at this demo giveaway we've put together to get an idea of the type of actions you can drive, and how you can display your terms and conditions inside your giveaway: