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How to start a challenge on instagram


How to Add a Challenge on Instagram Stories

  • You can add a Challenge sticker on an Instagram story to create a challenge or participate in a viral challenge.
  • Challenges let you participate in Instagram-wide trending tags, get creative, and put your photos in front of more eyes. 
  • If you don't see the Challenge sticker, first try updating your Instagram app.
  • Visit Business Insider's Tech Reference library for more stories.

One of Instagram stories newest interactive features is the challenges sticker. 

Challenges let users participate in group trends by attaching a sticker to their Instagram post and getting in on hashtag-based actions, such as #StayAtHome. You can also create your own challenges around fashion, workout, bingo, food, and more, before encouraging your friends to join and seeing how popular your challenge becomes. 

Keep in mind that when you do a challenge through the Instagram mobile app, anyone who can see your story will be able to tap the username of the person you've tagged and navigate to their profile.

If you want to get involved, or you want to use the feature to create your own challenges, here's how to do it. 

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How to add a challenge on Instagram stories

1. Open the Instagram app. 

2. Tap the camera icon to access the "Stories" section. 

You can find this icon in the top-left corner of the screen. Devon Deflino/Business Insider

3. Take your photo, or select or create the post. 

4. Tap the "Stickers" icon located toward the top-right corner of the screen

This button looks like a smiling sticky note. Devon Deflino/Business Insider

5. Scroll down and then select "Challenge."

You may find other options like Quiz and Countdown near the Challenge sticker. Devon Deflino/Business Insider

6. Select an existing challenge from the ribbon of options that appears above your keyboard or search for existing ones using a keyword. 

You can also create your own by adding the name to the designated challenge text box. Devon Deflino/Business Insider

7. Nominate someone by typing their username into the area below the challenge name text box. 

8. Tap "Done" when you're ready to post.

  • How to add a GIF to your Instagram Story using GIPHY

  • How to add a location on your Instagram story to share it with your followers

  • How to put music on your Instagram Story and customize it

  • How to make Instagram highlight covers for the Story Highlights on your profile page'

  • How to add a countdown to your Instagram story and announce events

Devon Delfino

Devon Delfino is a Brooklyn-based freelance journalist specializing in personal finance, culture, politics, and identity. Her work has been featured in publications such as The Los Angeles Times, Teen Vogue, Business Insider, and CNBC. Follow her on Twitter at @devondelfino.

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What I Learned From Hosting An Instagram Challenge (+ 6 Tips to Create Your Own!)

What I Learned From Hosting An Instagram Challenge (+ 6 Tips to Create Your Own!)

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Recently, I started my own, two-week Instagram challenge and invited my readers and followers to join in. The challenge ended up being very successful — it yielded almost 1,000 tagged photos and hundreds of participants. In case you’re unclear, an Instagram challenge is when you create a photo prompt for each day over a certain span of time and invite others to participate with you. For us, our prompts were mainly focused on Spring and we did it for two weeks. I learned a lot about hosting an Instagram challenge from this experience, and want to share two things with you today:

  1. Why you should start an Instagram challenge.
  2. How to create one of your own (and rock it!).
  1. Instagram is many people’s favorite social media platform. In fact, in our 2014 reader survey, 50% of respondents said they favored Instagram over other social platforms (Comparatively, the second highest was Twitter at only 21%). If you know where your followers are hangin’ out, then it’s smart to build a presence there, too. Starting an Instagram challenge not only builds your presence, but gives people an incentive to interact more with your brand and create a stronger community.
  2. You will gain more followers. During the two-week challenge, we gained about 200 followers. Now, I do want to point out that we’re not trying to increase our followers just for the sake of having more followers. We’re trying to increase our numbers because we know that Instagram followers are likely to turn into dedicated blog readers or web design clients.
  3. It builds trust with your brand.  People are more likely to trust you after having a positive, shared experience together. It creates more of a camaraderie rather than the separation that many brands have with their followers.
  4. It’s fun! I wasn’t sure if I’d enjoy having a daily commitment to post a themed photo to my account (pressure!), but I ended up liking it and felt more creative during the challenge. I also had a lot of people tell me that it was growing their Instagram followings with new, dedicated followers that discovered them through our unique hashtag. Not only that, but it gave me a much more personal look into my readers’ lives. Normally, my reader interaction is done in the comments of blog posts, but those aren’t visual. Viewing everyone’s photos through the challenge helped me to feel more connected to our readers — I got to see pictures of their homes, people they love, the weather where they live, and more!

Related: 11 Surefire Ways to Grow Your Instagram Following

  1. Partner up with other Instagrammers.  For this challenge, I was the only host. This worked well because it was only our followers who participated (so we got to know our readers better), but pairing up with one or two other friends to host your challenge would likely create an even stronger community with more creative minds. Not to mention, you will probably gain more followers from a challenge if you’re not the only host because you’ll be utilizing their followers as well.
  2. Select a good hashtag for your challenge. The hashtag is one of the most important parts, because it’s what people will use to tag their photos and be included in the challenge. Choose something that is easy to remember and not being used (check Instagram first to be sure!). Use your blog or business name in your hashtag, so that it is easier for followers to connect it to your brand and remember who is hosting it.
  3. Keep your prompts simple. It’s better to use simple prompts (for example, one of ours was simply, “yellow”), than to use something too descriptive.  You don’t want it to be so difficult that it’s hard for people to think of what they could photograph. Plus, open-ended prompts allow for the most creative thinking.
  4. Select a manageable length of time to run it. Ours was two weeks and I felt like that was perfect! Not so long that it became a chore, but not so short that it was unmemorable.
  5. Directly invite people to join before it starts. We didn’t think to do this until after the fact, but sending a personalized email to certain bloggers or Instagrammers (ideally people you’ve interacted with before) to let them know about your challenge and invite them to participate could create a larger buzz. Rather, we just posted about it here on our blog and also in our email newsletter, but I definitely think that personally inviting people could yield even better results.
  6. Interact with participants. This was one of my favorite parts. I enjoyed going through the hashtag, liking participant photos and leaving them comments. It made me feel more connected to the people who were participating, and feeling connected is really important to me. Instagram actually thought I was a spammer a couple times and wouldn’t let me leave more comments because I was commenting TOO much, haha! Encouragement goes a long way in motivating people, so I think it’s important for the host to take time to like and comment on participant photos.
  7. Do a recap on your blog. If you have a blog, then share a recap of the challenge each week. For our recap, we shared each of the photos we had shared so far, as well as some of our favorites from participants. Not only did this give a pat on the back to the people we featured, it also reminded our readers about the challenge so that they can jump in if they forgot about our first announcements.

Would you ever host an Instagram challenge? I’d love to hear from you! 🙂

p.s. 20 Instagram Accounts to Fuel Your Creativity

 

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Challenge on Instagram: what is it, how to do

Challenge is a simple task that users are asked to complete. The format is popular on TikTok and has now become relevant on Instagram. With the help of challenges, you can interest the audience, increase the number of subscribers and their activity.

In today's article, you will learn about the features of Instagram challenges, why they should be held and how to launch them. Get 10 original Instagram challenge ideas.

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What is an Instagram challenge

Translated from English, “challenge” means “challenge”. A person does something on camera and invites others to repeat it with the addition of a challenge hashtag. To put it simply, it takes on weakly. For example, "do you feel bad about publishing a photo from 10 years ago?"

What will the launch of the challenge give:

  • free advertising - increase awareness, especially if you add a branded hashtag and enter your product in the task;
  • increase in reach - thousands of users click on the hashtag during the challenge;
  • Strengthen loyalty through engaging content.

On Instagram, challenges are posted to stories with a new #challenge sticker (it's included in the standard Stories sticker set). When using the sticker, you can rename the challenge and tag friends you challenge. At the bottom of the screen there is a field for searching for already running challenges.

How to start challenges on Instagram

Consider the organization step by step. To launch an effective challenge, every step is important.

1. Decide on a goal

Select the task that the challenge will solve:

  • increase sales of a service or product;
  • diversify content;
  • increase the number of subscribers;
  • to increase the activity of the audience;
  • draw attention to yourself/brand;
  • to strengthen loyalty.

2. Draw a portrait of the target audience

To engage users, it is important to understand their interests and pains. Decide who your audience is, what is important to them, what they are fond of, where they live. The more detailed you draw a portrait of your potential subscribers, the better you can choose the topic and format of the challenge.

3. Come up with an idea

Come up with an original but simple task: a flash mob, dance, demonstration of strength, endurance or creativity. We recommend that you come up with several different options and give preference to the most successful one. Here it is important to interest the target audience and touch on a topical issue.

Select the name of the challenge and the hashtag for it. For example, for a ballroom dance challenge, the hashtag #dancechallenge is suitable.

When editing a challenge sticker, the word "challenge" cannot be deleted. You can only change the beginning of the hashtag. In a regular post and Stories without a new sticker, you can run a challenge with any hashtag.

4. Describe the conditions of the challenge

Participants should understand what is required of them, so describe all the conditions in detail.

Prepare an informative, catchy text and a good visual for the announcement. Start promoting the upcoming challenge one to two weeks before launch.

5. Post the challenge

Make sure you have the latest version of Instagram installed before posting the challenge. Go to your Instagram feed. Click on your avatar with a plus at the top of the screen - this will take you to the stories section.

Take a video or add a video from your phone's gallery. Go to the tab with stickers and click on "Challenge".

Change the name. Below, specify the users to whom you want to transfer the call: enter a nickname in the "My choice: @" field. It can be one person or several.

Click on the check mark in the upper right corner.

Complete and publish the challenge. The users you tagged will receive a notification.

They will be able to answer the challenge by clicking on the corresponding button.

6. Promotion

If you have a lot of active followers, ask them to support your challenge. You can offer cooperation to an opinion leader whose target audience is the same as yours. Let this popular blogger take part in your challenge - this will attract the attention of many users.

Interesting:

10 Ideas for an Instagram Challenge

Let's consider entertainment, motivational and commercial challenges from different social networks. All of them are suitable for implementation in Instagram.

Learn something new

This could be a long marathon, like Become an SMM Specialist in a Week or English in 21 Days. Some Instagram bloggers use this format for paid education. For example, the founder of the Wishdo agency, Dasha Andreeva, organized the #PerfectInstaChallenge with a two-week training to promote business on Instagram.

When choosing the regular short format, for example, a language school might invite its audience to learn a complex tongue twister in Spanish or Chinese.

Memes and parodies

These TikTok videos are tagged with the hashtag #yakoda. The participants of the challenge make parodies of life situations: “when the Internet turned off”, “when you want to invite a girl on a date” .

Parodies and memes are filmed for entertainment purposes, but the format may also be suitable for advertising a product/service.

Physical activity

Healthy lifestyle is a popular topic, so marathons of weight loss and proper nutrition, long-distance running and various exercises are good for users.

For example, Anastasia Sozonik did a squat challenge in the most unusual places. Each participant tagged the girl in their post, which gave her additional publicity. Friends of the challenge participants saw these posts, many of them went to Anastasia's profile and signed up.

Products in the video

One of the most successful TikTok challenges of 2019 was the “Dance like Pepsi” challenge. It was launched by Pepsi and the Magnit retail chain, inviting TikTokers to dance with a Pepsi drink at the entrance to the store.

75,000 users took part in the challenge, and the videos received over 100 million views. However, the effectiveness of the relay is due to the popularity of the brands and the fact that the popular blogger Anastasia Ivleeva has become its ambassador. In addition, prizes were raffled among the participants: GoPro, iPhone, headphones, sweatshirt.

Funny Food Challenges

Some of the funniest food challenges are #chubbybunnychallenge and #rawonionchallenge. In the latter, you need to eat as many onions as possible in a minute. The #chubbybunnychallenge challenge requires participants to fill their cheeks with marshmallows, candy or cookies to become a "hamster". This hashtag has over 10,000 posts.

Things to do at home

The lockdown triggered the #quarantinelife challenge. But the topic of interesting home leisure will be relevant even after quarantine. You can organize #fitness-kitchen or #sporthome challenges. The main thing is humor and creativity.

Charity

The purpose of these challenges is to draw people's attention to the problems of society. So you will do a good deed and at the same time increase loyalty to yourself. Such challenges always have a lot of participants, which means that you will definitely get new subscribers.

For example, in 2014, the #icebucketchallenge global challenge took place. Its essence: pour a bucket of cold water on yourself and donate $ 10 to a charity fund to fight amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (in the description of the challenge there was also information about the disease). After that, the participant passed the baton to three of his friends. The person who refused to complete the task was obliged to donate $ 100 to the fund.

More than 699 thousand posts have been published under the #icebucketchallenge hashtag. Many media personalities took part in the challenge, and the charitable foundation received almost $100 million.

Complicated Makeup

Participants in the No Mirror Makeup Challenge have to do their own make-up without a mirror, and in the Blindfold Makeup Challenge, make up another person while blindfolded. In most cases, it turns out funny and ridiculous.

Such challenges are a godsend for beauty bloggers and cosmetic brands.

Dance

The band "LittleBig" launched a dance flash mob #unovisionchallenge with a catchy move from their "Uno" video. The challenge has garnered millions of views.

You too can come up with some fun moves or a dance to start your challenge.

Memories

The essence of the #10yearchallenge challenge is to post a photo from a decade ago and a recent photo for comparison. This idea makes it possible to show not only changes in appearance, but also the development of the company, a change in the range of goods.

Conclusion

Launching an Instagram challenge will help you capture the attention of users and attract new customers. The main thing is to choose an original format and a topic that is interesting for your target audience.

Useful links :

  • How to become popular on Instagram
  • Auto-posting stories to Instagram
  • Mass reactions in Instagram stories
  • How to start mass following on Instagram



10 ideas for challenges with the sticker "Your answer" in Instagram

Not so long ago, a new feature appeared on Instagram - the sticker "Your answer" in stories. The sticker allows you to post a story and ask followers to respond to it. It turns out something like challenges.

Let's figure out how you can use this feature for promotion and share ideas for challenges with a new sticker. Recommended Reading To add a sticker to a story, after uploading a photo, open the sticker panel and select "Your answer".

Then add text that serves as a hint or call to action. Write such a text so that subscribers, when they see your story, immediately understand what action is required of them. Please note that the maximum number of characters on a sticker is 45.

Finally, we publish the story. When subscribers see this story, they can click on the sticker and post their response. Also, when you click on the sticker, a list of those who have already answered it opens, and under the text is the nickname of the one who launched the challenge. Only for some reason the nickname is not clickable.

As you already understood, this is the perfect sticker to launch challenges and flash mobs. To the ideas for which we are moving on.

10 ideas for challenges with the “Your answer” sticker on Instagram

The key point in launching the challenge is that those who see the story with it want to answer it.

Search terms/suggestions

Think of a search term or start typing it and take a picture of what the search engine shows you.

The mechanics of engagement is that a person wants to check what the search engine shows him and share his result. Ideally, if it is funny or amusing.

Example: Colour. With such a search query, the search engine shows everyone different options, so all participants will have their own answer.

Phrases from T9

The engagement mechanics are about the same, you need to show what words your phone gives out if you start typing a phrase. It is better to take popular phrases or established expressions.

Examples:

  • Love is..
  • Friendship is when..
  • Nature doesn't have bad weather. .
  • You can't pull it out without effort..

Something of the very best

Here we act on the desire of users to boast, to share something meaningful for them. Something the very best.

Examples:

  • The most beautiful place you visited this year
  • The best day
  • The most significant moment
  • The most beloved person

What your target audience will like

You need to know and study the interests of your target audience well, then you can launch a flash mob that they will like and get a response.

If it's moms - what is related to children, if you have a blog about proper nutrition - recipes for sweets, if the blog is about travel - what do you take with you on a hike. And so on.

Best way/solution

It's kind of like an advice challenge. You ask your followers to share ideas, experiences and suggestions about a problem/situation.

Examples:

  • The best way to deal with depression;
  • The best way to spend a Friday night/weekend break;
  • The ultimate storage solution.

Digital Detox

Gadgets have captured the world and people's attention. Accordingly, many people think about how much time they spend at the computer or looking at the screen of their gadget.

You can use this trend and start a challenge, the conditions of which will be to post a screen of an application every day that monitors your screen time. Thus, it is possible to extend the challenge for more than 24 hours.

Draw...

Ideal for illustrators, but easy to use for everyone. Ask your audience to draw something and put it on stories.

Also, the challenge can be supplemented with some condition: draw with your eyes closed, with your left hand, with both hands, and so on.

Recipe

Food is one of the foundations of life, of every person. Even those who do not like to cook sometimes get behind the stove and they have their own signature way to cook a dish. You can also link this challenge in stories to an event in the calendar - New Year, Christmas or March 8th.

Examples:

  • Your recipe for New Year's Olivier;
  • Recipe for your breakfast;
  • Pizza recipe for the weekend.

Selfie Challenge

People love themselves, so you can play on this and start a selfie challenge. Ask your followers to share their selfies from different locations.

Examples:

  • Last selfie from gallery;
  • Elevator selfie;
  • Selfie at work.

Trends

You can also use the current topic for challenges. Due to the hype around it, you can encourage subscribers to respond and attract more participants.

Examples:

  • Falling bitcoin;
  • Taxi driver and Murad;
  • Moscow, Lyublino metro station, we are working.

Conclusion

Remember that it's not enough just to launch a challenge, it's good if it starts by itself, but it's better to order advertising from a blogger. For example, discuss the possibility of a blogger to participate in this challenge.

Learn more