The Instagram Marathon is the most effective way to promote your profile. It is one of the best ways to increase your live audience and attract new visitors to your page. Creative presentation of diverse and useful content helps to gather active like-minded followers. We will tell you how to conduct marathons correctly, choose a topic, and retain your audience.
What is this?
This is a unique type of training with a presentation of a new product, goods, or services. A marathon usually lasts several days, often from 3 to 7. It is such a popular tool that they are launched practically every day on a wide variety of topics.
As we know, the more subscribers and the more active they are, the higher the value of such a profile and the monetization of the resource. The three main goals for conducting a marathon are:
- expanding the reach of your audience, attracting new followers, involving “silent” subscribers in the process;
- attracting your audience to the advertising product, goods, or services;
- monetizing the resource.
Marathons can be conducted both individually and in a joint run with several bloggers. It can be a free experience purely on enthusiasm or a paid marathon. The main points to pay attention to and where to start are the topic, preparation, and motivation.
Topic selection
The choice of topic depends not only on the direction of your business or the theme of the page, you can be unconventional here, the main thing is that the audience appreciates it. You can organize a marathon on the following topics:
Photography
Many users of photo networks try to find themselves in object photography, develop a stylish taste for photos. The direction is very interesting and promising, the demand for photo artists is growing every day. Throughout the marathon, active participants master the basic points and nuances of correct composition building, learn to make stylish layouts, expressing their individuality.
Drawing and Illustrations
Do you know what sketching is? Well, many people don’t! It’s actually a very attractive form of art that can significantly increase interest in your unique profile. Sketching is a technique of fast drawing, for example with markers. Sketching professionals create such atmospheric compositions that it’s hard to pass by them.
Fitness, healthy lifestyle and weight loss
The essence of such marathons is not just to introduce their audience to a new product on the market that will help them lose weight quickly. A truly useful marathon will help you master healthy eating habits, make friends with your type of physical activity, and get charged with the right motivation among like-minded people.
Handmade
In recent times, the creative direction of handmade crafts has been gaining increasing popularity. The audience values true masters who can share and demonstrate real techniques, showing how to make unique sweets out of anything. Handmade marathons engage a large audience, allowing for a quick increase in the number of live subscribers, sharing inspiration, and replenishing their portfolio with fresh works.
Self-development and education
Psychologists, coaches, and bloggers who have achieved certain goals in life enthusiastically share their experience with anyone who wants to learn. Thanks to free marathons, many people learn how to set and achieve their goals correctly, change their thinking, and improve themselves.
Business, commerce, and earnings
Representatives of small, medium, and large businesses have long appreciated the Instagram platform for implementing many plans, such as promoting brand awareness and increasing real sales. If you already have a business or want to organize one, then the business marathon is the place where you will learn how to manage finances, legally reduce tax payments, conclude a contract with a client, and many other useful tricks.
Profile and content preparation
In order to organize a quality marathon, it is important to create a favorable environment by preparing an open profile and content. Instagram users are so experienced with various lotteries and contests that they can only be attracted today by a unique and truly interesting theme.
The preparation stages for “marathoners” on Instagram:
- Profile preparation begins a few days before the marathon launch. Depending on the theme, a beautiful page design is created, and relevant stories are made. It is essential to fill in the profile header with the necessary information!
- Target audience selection. Depending on the direction of the marathon, there should be a clear orientation towards your audience. You cannot effectively influence and engage homemakers, fitness models, and business owners with the same methods. Determine the real portrait of your client.
- Prepare the design of the posts that will be posted during the marathon. Text files should be numbered or better yet, labeled. When they are needed, it will be easier for you to copy the prepared material, add creativity, and send it to all participants via DM, direct or e-mail.
Remember, a clear plan and proper preparation are the key to future success. Otherwise, if something goes wrong, such as an unforeseen change in the rules or participants simply becoming bored, you can get the opposite effect. The audience will start unsubscribing from such an unsuccessful blogger, often in a mass manner.
Motivation for target audience
The key to engaging your target audience is interesting content, truly useful information, and guaranteed prizes! The Instagram platform format is attractive because the participants are genuinely interested users who come for the content.
No matter how interested your regular subscribers are, additional motivation such as a prize or gift is needed to truly engage new audiences. The easiest step is to choose a generous sponsor for the entire marathon. In this case, the interest and engagement of new subscribers will be much more active and fun. Try to use all the tools available, rather than focusing on just one direction.
Create mixes, be creative, and surprise new followers. Encourage every achievement and every task completed. A great idea is to incorporate a gaming mechanism for completing levels and receiving prizes. Often, something from the advertising product is chosen as a reward, such as “Personal Consultation,” “Basic Online Course,” or “Purchase Subscription.”
It is important to ask winners to leave their impressions of receiving the prize. Participants need to be confident that the prizes are real and actually awarded.
Step-by-step guide
Any owner of a somewhat advanced Instagram page can hold a marathon, but the point is not just to gather your audience, but to really engage and interest them. Create a step-by-step plan of all tasks for each day:
- Launch. It’s best to start with a live broadcast. Introduce the topic, for example, show how to knit booties from start to finish.
- Go over the key moments of knitting booties, with a breakdown of how to choose the yarn, determine the size, etc. Give the task – to knit a pair of booties.
- Get the results from the marathon participants, analyze mistakes, and provide tips on the main points.
- IGTV video with a review of the best product. Summarize the first task. Choose the winner.
This is the kind of plan that should be created for any Instagram marathon, and the possibilities are endless! You can continue in this style for the launch of the second, third, and all subsequent tasks.
How to create a beautiful announcement and newsletter about the launch of a marathon
Launching a promotional announcement about the start of a marathon is a very important step. The main criterion that needs to be conveyed to the engaged audience is what the marathon is for and what it consists of.
- Stylish posts with the main conditions of the “race”, schedule, and time of the event. First of all, notify all your followers when live broadcasts are planned. Asking your followers for their opinion on when it is convenient to hold the event is a great idea – at the same time when everyone is online.
- Posts with upcoming tasks. Be sure to come up with and insert your own enticing “tricks” about what visitors will not find such information anywhere else and will not complete such tasks as yours.
- For a free marathon, a great method of advertising is guest posts in thematic accounts. You will not be charged a penny for such advertising. You need to create a quality post with an enticing feature.
- Launching advertising posts in thematic communities. Even with a limited budget, you can achieve excellent results. The cost of placement starts from 1000 rubles per post. In this case, the post should be catchy, and you need to choose a community with a good base of active subscribers.
- Targeted advertising. If the sponsor is focused on effective results, it’s time to think about targeting. Business profile owners offer different prices for active followers. Often, the price range does not exceed 6 to 10 rubles per subscriber.
- Targeted mailing to the customer base. This method is more labor-intensive, and such tasks for mass mailings can be found on freelance exchanges, with a cost of 200 rubles for sending 500 invitations. If there is no extra budget, then send beautiful selling letters with a bright announcement of the upcoming marathon on your own. In the message, be sure to include: a link to the profile, the date of the event, and the main prize.
If everything is done correctly and creatively, expect to see a decent base of active visitors, potential subscribers, and buyers on your marathon.
How to keep your audience engaged until the end of the marathon
In fact, conducting a marathon on Instagram is very easy, but organizing a really cool training with a large audience to keep everyone until the end is difficult. Here you need to use really cool tricks, here are a few examples.
Live streaming launch
Live broadcasts should show the organizer in the best possible light. There should be clear speech and a cozy atmosphere that encourages a warm reception. Communication should flow like among good friends, don’t forget to joke and relieve tension.
Before conducting a marathon, a specific goal for why it is being held should be established. It’s not just a training on “How to knit booties”, but a fun and engaging event with its unique twist, such as “Bunny-ear booties for your son” or “Plush booties for your princess daughter”. A marathon is not about introducing people to mundane things, it’s about something new and unexplored that only you know!
Posting contests in stories
Here’s the main trick that always works 100% – story post contests. Instagram’s audience is so open, loyal, and sociable that they love contests. The important thing is creativity and originality. Try not to use tired methods, as constantly repeating “buy an elephant” gets boring and loses interest.
The easiest and most well-received contest is “Giving away gifts, but do something first.” This task allows for a wide range of imagination. It’s an effective motivation for followers to be active and compete for prizes.
IGTV” – это название функции Instagram, которая позволяет пользователям загружать и просматривать длинные видео формата вертикального экрана
Don’t miss the opportunity to gather all your followers to watch your videos on IGTV! Your followers will appreciate your attention to detail, as this convenient service eliminates the need to switch to YouTube to watch long videos.
With IGTV, you can upload videos up to 60 minutes long. The vertical video format is easy to watch, and viewers can comment and share videos with friends through Direct. Each author has the ability to create their own channel, and convenient sections allow for quick access to favorite videos. Easily launch previews of your marathon right from IGTV and the whole world will know about it!
Summing up the Instagram marathon: prize distribution
The most exciting moment is determining the winners. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to please everyone, so you’ll have to choose clearly in accordance with the requirements set. Note that several followers may come out on the home stretch! If there are a couple of worthy contenders for one place, try to allocate prizes and not offend anyone. Summarize the results and publish them in your blog. Use transparency in your choices as the main aspect of building trusting relationships with your followers. Encourage participants to speak out boldly in their profiles, leaving their feedback on the marathon.
Analysis and evaluation of effectiveness
After any competition event, it is customary to summarize, analyze effectiveness, and draw correct conclusions. To evaluate a marathon, it is necessary to track achievements in relation to the set goal. If the main goal was to increase the audience, attract new followers, and increase activity in the profile, then it is time to start analyzing.
Results can be tracked in different ways, both free and paid. Many bloggers use ordinary tools for collecting statistics available on Instagram business profiles.
What indicators to focus on:
- increase in subscribers/unsubscribes;
- number of likes;
- reach of publications;
- engagement (the ratio of reach to activity under the post);
- how much real sales from the blog have increased.
Attention! If the goal of the marathon was to increase sales from the blog, then the statistics analysis should be conducted no earlier than 10 days after the end of the competition.
Proper statistics analysis will give a clear understanding of the weak and strong points in the conducted marathon. It will become clear which tricks worked the most and which did not work.
Do not be discouraged if the first Instagram marathon does not bring the desired results. Experience is needed here, which comes with the number of events held. It is necessary to work on mistakes, eliminate non-working methods, and prepare a clear plan for the next marathon. There are no restrictions on conducting marathon races, so everything depends on your desire and creativity.